Thank you very much for joining us. It's great to be here again today. It's only two days since our last meeting for some of you, so I'm sure you're delighted to see a lot of us this week. As usual, I'm joined on the stage by our CFO, Russell O’Brien, the leadership teams in the front row, and we've got a Chairman here as well, Kevin O’Byrne. The work we've done to improve our operations and pivot our infrastructure portfolio means that our business is becoming more balanced and more resilient. You can see that coming through in these results. We're increasingly able to offer our customers the solutions that will keep energy reliable, sustainable, and affordable through the energy transition. We can look to the future with confidence.
External conditions have been challenging so far this year, and our results reflect that with earnings of GBP 0.07 per share. Weather's cost is about GBP 50 million in the first half, but whereas we can't control the weather, we've been able to use technology and data to improve our response. We've developed new models for predicting demand, which resulted in better performance during the recent exceptionally warm weather than it would otherwise have been, and we've moved away from fuel seasonal non-hedging. This mitigated the weather impact by tens of millions of pounds. Although Centrica Energy's faced headwinds in gas and solar trading, we were prudent about the way we traded in the first half. We were disciplined. We took risk capital off, and we sat, and we watched the market. We're not alone in seeing these external trends, but we're also not complacent.
We remain focused in creating value, and the way that we're managing the business means there's no change to our outlook for this year or beyond. In fact, we're increasingly confident that we can deliver in the top half of our EBITDA range by 2028, and personally, I'll be very disappointed if we don't do much, much better than that. We remain in good shape to deliver growth with our balance sheet in a very, very strong position. That means we can also continue to recognize our owners, our shareholders, through the ongoing buyback program and our intended GBP 5.50 dividend this year. The energy transition continues to present massive opportunities for Centrica, opportunities to keep energy secure and affordable for customers while supporting the journey to net zero. We remain disciplined and pragmatic as we pursue these opportunities with the terms at the heart of everything that we do.
We're focused on our three strategic value drivers. Number one, driving operational improvements across the group. Number two, more commercial innovation. Number three, investing for value. We've made progress across the board, but there's still much, much more that we can do, particularly on the commercial side and most notably in Services & Solutions. Profitability is growing. It's great to see, but we need to get customer numbers moving in the right direction. We can further simplify how we do things. The good news is that the steps we've taken over the past few years, moving our data to the cloud, beefing up our capabilities, means that we can embrace the latest advances in AI and technology. There is a huge amount of value here for us, both in the top line and in our cost base. That's why we're accelerating our transformation plans, and I'll expand on that later.
When we launched our strategy in 2023, we laid out how we would position Centrica to benefit from the energy transition. Disciplined investment to grow our infrastructure business is a key part of this strategy, with a clear target to increase our share of stable, regulated earnings. We've taken a significant step forward in that with Sizewell C. We're delighted to be a part of this project alongside the U.K. government, EDF, La Caisse , and Amber . We could not have better partners to push this development forward at pace. Once built, Sizewell C will provide vital energy security for the U.K., generating affordable zero-carbon baseload power for decades to come, creating 10,000 highly skilled jobs and 1,500 apprenticeships. Developing nuclear plants is not easy. The government deserves huge credit for recognizing the need for this investment.
I'd like to reiterate my thanks to the U.K. government, to the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and our team at the Treasury, and to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, and his team, by creating a stable, long-term regulatory framework. They've addressed the key barriers to attracting private capital, allowing us to invest with confidence and delivering clear benefits for the country at the same time. We set a high bar to commit our capital. The structure we've agreed delivers attractive returns, and it meets the requirements we laid out: phased investment, no pre-productive capital, and protection against delays and cost overruns. We've also secured valuable future options to potentially increase our stake and to provide route-to-market services. It's a long-term investment. It's backed by regulation, and this will make us far more predictable.
We're doing what we said we'd do, and we've got more fantastic opportunities under review to deploy capital. That remains our focus, subject, of course, to delivering value. As I said before, we will be very disciplined. We like nuclear. It's the only truly reliable and sustainable source of energy. It's the backbone of the energy transition. Aside from Sizewell, we continue to study the case for even further life extensions at our four advanced gas-cooled reactors. Any extension would be a pure value upside that is limited or no additional investment required. Elsewhere, the Meter Asset Provider continues to perform better than we expected. The team's done a fantastic job growing a business from scratch. It shows what we can do when we bring the right people together with the right focus.
As of last week, we have got over 1 million meters on the wall, and we expect to take that to 1.5 million meters by the end of this year. Our EBITDA target is well underpinned, and we are starting to think about broader commercial opportunities, exploring how we can grow this fantastic business even faster. In Ireland, we now expect the commissioning of our two gas peakers around the end of this year. We are working really hard to get the plants up and running, and the case for reliable backup generation continues to grow. That is why we are pleased to be building a third peaker in Galway. That will take us to 1 GW of capacity in Ireland by 2030, which is 20% of Ireland's current electricity demand, with the terms underpinned by long-term capacity market contracts at all four Irish gas power stations.
Our long-term pipeline remains strong. We continue to review a broad range of opportunities. At the same time, we have accelerated value by selling most of our share in the Cygnus gas field. That continues our move away from gas production, and it increases our focus in Spirit Energy on the really exciting carbon storage opportunity at Morecambe Net Zero. If you look at Rough, we welcome the government's recently announced consultation on gas storage, and this will consider possible regulatory frameworks to unlock investment. Rough is a vital strategic asset for this country, but we have been clear that a loss of up to GBP 100 million this year is not sustainable. We continue to produce the remaining gas just now, and we are ready to develop Rough as soon as we get the right framework in place.
This will be another long-term project, delivering energy security for the country and value for our shareholders. We remain hopeful, but we cannot keep this option open indefinitely. Without a positive outcome from consultation, and the consultation is due to start in the autumn, it is hard to see Rough operating beyond the end of this winter. We will be urging the government to move at speed. That is enough from me. Russell is going to take you through the numbers, and then I will come back and talk to you about the strategy later.
Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Before I dive into numbers, I just want to echo Chris's sentiment that we continue to see good progress across the Group. We have delivered strong operating metrics, and we remain focused on further improvements as we move forward. For the first half, adjusted EBITDA was GBP 900 million, translating into earnings per share of GBP 0.07. Whilst resilient overall, certain elements of the first half have been challenging, and our financial results reflect that. We generated free cash flow of almost GBP 250 million, which includes CapEx of GBP 244 million, and our adjusted net cash closed at GBP 2.5 billion.
After returning GBP 500 million to our shareholders through the share buyback and dividends, we have declared a dividend of GBP 1.83 per share for the half. That is 22% year-on-year up, consistent with our intention to pay GBP 5.50 per share for the full year. At the end of June, we had about GBP 450 million remaining on our GBP 2 billion buyback. Group operating profit was GBP 549 million, a softer result compared to last year. Let me take you through the key elements of that. Retail and Optimization delivered GBP 354 million of operating profit for the half. Within that, our profits in retail grew, a good result given that backdrop. Services and Solutions saw an improved result of GBP 42 million. Stronger operational performance supported by top-line growth of 4% and margins grew.
There is still much more to come in services, and we are building momentum. We remain confident we will hit our guidance range next year. Now, despite the warmer-than-normal weather that Chris mentioned, British Gas Energy delivered GBP 179 million of operating profit, a year-on-year increase driven by strong performance in small business. Centrica Energy was impacted by unusual market conditions, with operating profit of GBP 65 million. Infrastructure output was broadly flat against last year, although profits were lower due to falling commodity prices, and that is partially offset by the hedging we did. We also saw a loss at Rough of GBP 26 million, principally driven by the high fixed cost base and lower gas price spreads, although we were able to accelerate delivery of some of the revenue and release working capital. Let me unpack a couple of the important dynamics behind the results.
Weather is our single biggest risk, and there is very limited scope to hedge it out. A cold start to the year meant we were about GBP 50 million ahead by the end of February, but for March, that reversed. Unseasonably warm temperatures meant volumes were 12% lower than normal through to June. That cost us overall GBP 100 million. Overall, net-net, it was a GBP 50 million headwind from weather. As is always the case with this business, there are timing differences between periods on revenues and costs, which influence the results. We saw that this half, including a GBP 40 million benefit from the final reconciliation of the Energy Price Guarantee scheme and the headwind from the shape of the commodity curves. In Centrica Energy, our LNG and renewable route-to-market businesses are performing well, but results were softer because of two important trends impacting gas and power trading.
First, gas storage economics have been impacted by mandatory volume targets in Europe. That was a key driver of inverted summer-winter spreads, which significantly reduced the opportunities we saw to secure capacity this year. The result is that European gas and storage is currently lower than average. The risk to energy security is higher due to these measures. Secondly, we generate profit by optimizing based on market fundamentals and our diversified range of physical positions. So far this year, volatility has been driven by geopolitics, tariff news flows, soundbites. The market saw short-cycle volatility driven by speculative capital disrupting the fundamental physical trades we focus on. As a result of these trends, we've remained very disciplined and deployed far less capital in storage and elsewhere than we normally would. Now, we are beginning to see more rational behavior returning to the European gas markets. Fundamentals are reasserting themselves.
Storage targets have been eased, and more opportunities are emerging. That gives us more confidence heading into the second half. Our LNG and renewable route-to-market businesses are performing well, and of course, we're not standing still either. We're continuing to grow our capabilities, including the recent opening of our first Centrica Energy office in the US. We see a path to the low end of our GBP 250 million-GBP 350 million guidance range this year, albeit that requires a further normalization in the markets to get there. Moving out to cash flow, including EBITDA and dividends received from our nuclear business, we generated over GBP 800 million. We paid cash tax of GBP 200 million. The net working capital movement was almost GBP 100 million out, but that masks a couple of offsetting movements in British Gas Energy and Rough, highlighting again the value of the balanced diversified portfolio.
Disciplined investment to grow our sustainable earnings is a key part of the strategy, and delivering attractive returns remains much more important to us than investing quickly. We all welcome the progress we've made this year in the MAP, and more recently on Sizewell C. First half investment included GBP 100 million in the MAP, and we expect CapEx to ramp up in the second half, including the initial spend on Sizewell C. We also continue to invest in technology, supporting the improvements we've already delivered across the operations and the next phase of transformation, which will make Centrica a much leaner, more agile company. All of this led to free cash flow of GBP 244 million for the period. Our balance sheet remains strong even after accounting for pension and decommissioning liabilities. Following completion of our Cygnus disposal, decommissioning will fall by around GBP 100 million.
You'll recall we reached agreement on a triennial review with the pension trustees in February. The assumptions used in that review are now reflected in the IAS 19 accounting valuation, which led to a rise in the deficit in the period. There's no change to our technical provisions or deficit funding plans. There is no change to the guidance we gave in our trading statement in May, and due to the factors I just discussed, we expect residential energy and Centrica Energy to come in towards the lower end of their profit ranges. Services & Solutions is expected to deliver a further improvement on last year's results, and we expect to be in the range next year. We're still comfortable with the range we laid out for infrastructure, and within that, we continue to expect a loss of up to GBP 100 million at Rough.
Of course, as normal, group profitability is expected to be weighted to the first half. To summarize, our performance in the first half was softer than we would have liked, but it has no impact on our ability to create long-term value. We've retained the guidance for the year and are focusing on significant opportunities across revenue and cost to maximize long-term earnings. Our balance sheet remains extremely strong, and our investment-grade credit rating is well underpinned. With the announcement of our investment in Sizewell C earlier this week, almost two-thirds of our investment program is now committed, delivering attractive returns. As our share of regulated earnings grows, we look forward to creating more balance sheet flexibility over time. We are doing all of that while returning capital to shareholders, progressing the dividend, and buying back shares consistently since 2022. Thanks for your time. Let me hand back to Chris.
Okay. Thanks, Russell. The situation that we faced five years ago was critical. We knew we needed to change, and I think that's exactly what we did. Our business today is far stronger as a result. We've got better relationships with our colleagues, better relationships with our customers. We've got a more focused portfolio. We've got a balance sheet that supports our ambitions rather than restricting them. The best companies are constantly improving, and that's why we're looking at the next phase of transformation for Centrica. There are hundreds of millions of pounds of value at play here, and I'm confident that we'll secure every last penny. You can see the progress in our energy supply business. Hard work over many years has transformed the operational foundations. We recently completed the migration of our U.K. residential customers to the Ignition platform.
The move in a quarter of the U.K.'s households makes it the largest utility platform migration globally. We did that without any external help. Our team has done an incredible job. Ignition is a key part of our strategy, unlocking commercial flexibility and innovation, deeper customer insights, and helping us lower our cost to serve. It's a key reason that we grew our customer base in the first half, helping us retain our existing customers and attract new customers. That success gives us the confidence to accelerate the rollout. The Bord Gáis migration will start soon. We've now got 40% of our U.K. SME customers in Ignition as well. In the past, we served all types of business customers, including very large industrial and commercial users who have sophisticated and often complex needs. We found these customers generated very low margins for the risks involved.
In 2022, we changed our focus, targeting smaller businesses, prioritizing value over volume. At the same time, we've been selling more through the Ignition platform. We've been using data to optimize pricing, delivering a better experience for customers and better returns for our business. The impact, as you can see, has been significant. Margins have almost doubled from where they were five years ago. We've added almost 100,000 new customer sites, including 11,000 in the first half of this year alone. The foundations are stronger, the commercial strategy is working, and we've got further growth opportunities there. You look at Services. Profitability in Services has improved again in the first half. Better operational performance is now well embedded. Margins are growing. The market continues to change around us. Consumers are moving away from protection products, and we're still losing customers. We've had to think differently, fundamentally rethinking our go-to-market strategy.
We started focusing on our on-demand offer a couple of years ago to make the most of the shift towards self-insurance. This continues to grow, and it's supported by more intelligent customer targeting and more dynamic pricing. I think we can still be much more commercial with our pricing, but we have created a gateway to bring in new customers, allowing us to demonstrate the value and peace of mind that we can provide. We're also building a portfolio, as you can see, of warranty partnerships with leading OEMs. We offer nationwide scale and an expert workforce. We address key constraints for our customers. Now, for Centrica, we increase engineer utilization. We improve profitability. We've already signed up several leading manufacturers and there are more to come. Services can deliver those solutions independently, but the real value emerges when we connect our capabilities.
Every boiler, every heat pump installation opens the door to other offerings: energy tariff, Hive thermostat, EV charger, a membership. Our membership scheme gives us a customer insight and marketing channel to offer more of these integrated propositions, focusing on cross-selling opportunities, generating recurring revenue, and building customer loyalty. We are showing progress, but as you know, and as my colleagues know, I'm always rather impatient for more. The world is changing. Leaps forward in technology and AI are fueling huge growth in electricity demand. Complexity and intermittency is increasing, and as a result, so is demand for reliable, sustainable energy, just like that which will come from Sizewell C. It is a fantastic time to be an energy supplier. It's a great opportunity to deliver excellence for our customers. We have to be ready. Now, how are we going to do that?
Firstly, we'll harness the full power of technology. Despite huge improvements in service quality, much of it driven by investing in our technology, last year we still had more than 18 million customer contacts in British Gas Energy alone. We've not made our processes easy enough. In that case, unhappy customers, it creates unnecessary contact. H ome move process is a good example of that. We've recognized the problem, we've identified the pain points, and we've streamlined the system for our colleagues, ensuring that they can deliver for our customers. We're now working to almost completely automate that process, making it as simple as possible for our customers to change their address without wasting any time at all on the phone. That's just one example of incremental steps to improve our customer experience and to reduce incoming contact.
By doing that, when our customers do need to contact us, we can handle their questions much more efficiently. We think we're ahead of the pack adopting leading-edge technology here, and it's delivering significant benefits already. We get fewer incoming contacts, we get quicker resolution, we get more satisfied customers, and ultimately, that gives you better customer retention, an improvement in cost, and an improvement in revenue. Secondly, we're accelerating commercial innovation. We're incentivizing our leaders to deliver the best outcome for the Group rather than for their individual business, breaking down the barriers to delivering the coordinated products and services our customers want that only we can provide. Finally, we're creating an even simpler Centrica. We have made great strides in efficiency, but we can't be complacent. What was efficient a few years ago is mediocre today, and soon it will be lagging behind.
I want us to be more focused, to remove bureaucracies, to promote faster decision-making, to spend more of our time delivering for our customers. I think we've got the potential to fundamentally rebase our cost base here, which will make us much more competitive. I've given a clear message to the business that this is about delivering a step change in performance. We're not going to tinker around the edges. That's why I'm confident that we can both narrow the 2028 EBITDA guidance range and deliver above the GBP 1.6 billion midpoint. My ambition is far, far higher than that. To recap, despite external headwinds in the first half, the team did the right things, and our underlying operations are performing well. The outlook for this year is unchanged, and we're staying focused on creating long-term value, taking a major step forward at Sizewell C alongside strong progress elsewhere.
This underpins our longer-term trajectory, and the transformation program means we can do much, much better. I'm really proud of the progress that we've made, and the teams across Centrica deserve huge credit for that, led by the leadership team here. I'm even more excited by what's to come. We've got incredibly strong foundations, and we remain laser-focused on delivering. That's enough from me. Thank you very much for listening. Russell, the leadership team, and maybe even our Chairman and I will be delighted to take any questions that you've got. Thank you. That's good. Mark? Okay. Dominic? Jenny? Yeah.
Hello. Mark, question from UBS. Can you hear me?
Oh, we can, but the microphone's off, so those online won't be able to keep going. Give us a tune.
Mark, question from UBS. Two questions. Firstly, on Rough, can you please be explicit about closure? Is it fair to say that if the government do not give a clear indication that the gas facilities will also, that there is a future for storage, you will shut that down? What date will you shut down? Can you talk through just the financials and what they might look like surrounding that? Secondly, Russell, just on the big tax residential, you are still guiding to the bottom of that GBP 150 million-GBP 250 million range. Yes, it was warm, but you had a GBP 40 million one-time credit from the EPG close out. Why is it still at the bottom of the range? Is that conservative? I guess, focus question, just regarding the GBP 1.5 billion cap down below and the opportunities within there other than Rough.
Can you give us a flavor for what you are looking at? Is it more next gen? Will it be an acquisition of another generation? What is it that fits within your portfolio?
Perfect. Let me take the last and the first, and then Russell will do the wizardry with the numbers on British Gas Residential. Look, we do not want to be any more specific on Rough. We have been very clear that we are not going to sustain losses on this. We will see how the consultation goes. You could also see a return to normality in the market, which I do not think is going to happen, which means that this could open up some business. If we do not have a positive outcome from the consultation, then it is hard to see that Rough will be open beyond the end of this coming winter. That takes you a little bit into the first half of next year. We do not have unlimited patience on this.
There have been very positive statements from the Secretary of State at the Energy Security Summit in April about gas storage. The Chancellor, when she did the comprehensive spending review, specifically mentioned—I cannot remember what she said—a part of her slide was something about the stupid decision of the last government to close Rough. I am encouraged by what I see and then also the announcement of the consultation. I think there is positive news there. The government has to make sure that they get what they consider to be value for money. We will see. They did obviously very well, I think, with Sizewell C. I am hoping they will do very well with Rough as well. In terms of the remaining investment program, there is a whole bunch of things we are looking at. I like flex gen. I like regulated assets.
We are looking at opportunities to expand the Meter Asset Provider as well. As you know, we are agnostic in technology in this, and there are a number of things that we are looking at. It will be within the bounds of what we laid out before, which is the returns will be good. Ideally, they will be contracted or regulated returns, and it will be more in the electricity space than in any of the gas production space or anything. The other thing we have got is Morecambe Net Zero. We were encouraged by the announcement by the National Wealth Fund of an investment in the front-end engineering and design for the pipeline from the peak cluster. The reason we are really encouraged is because, firstly, those are the customers who signed up to put carbon into Morecambe.
It was the fact that the National Wealth Fund and the government announcement specifically mentioned the carbon would be stored in Morecambe. We feel there is quite some momentum there. You have got a whole bunch of things. Rough would be a GBP 2 billion development over a number of years. Morecambe Net Zero, it is a bit earlier in the engineering stage. The range, which I find incredibly frustrating for engineers, is between GBP 2 billion and GBP 4 billion, which is quite a substantial range. You're probably looking at investment there 2030 and beyond. It is probably outside the window up to 2028. There is a huge amount of opportunities. What we are always very keen to do is to make sure that we have way more opportunities than we have capital for two reasons. One is it means that you can be selective with your opportunities.
The second thing is we are the light of the Sizewell C. If Sizewell C had not happened, it would not have been catastrophic for us because of the other ideas in there. We will always look to have far more ideas. Once we complete the program, we will then turn our mind to recycling capital. If we get an idea that gives us a better return than something we have got, we will sell what we have got. We will buy more. Lots of ideas. Russell, British Gas Residential, are you holding out? Mark, I think that was a question.
No, I'm not holding out. We're trying to give a balanced outlook. A couple of things on the residential energy business. The total result there, as reported, was GBP 179 million. Within that, it was GBP 133 million for residential energy and GBP 46 million for small business. The small business number actually was up from GBP 3 million last year. That had a big improvement. The residential energy business was actually slightly softer, half on half. I've discussed the sort of moving parts in there, the weather, a few one-offs. We've got GBP 13 billion worth a year of revenue and costs. Sometimes they do not always match in the same place.
Your question was really about the second half of the year and why we're guiding to the bottom of the range. The first main reason, there are just fewer colder months in the second half of the year. Seasonality drives the vast majority of that. We've got a little bit of a headwind continuing with the shape of the commodity curve, just because of the way that's got priced in. I think if you take all of that together, I'm thinking bottom half of the range is still the way to go.
Tom.
Sorry, before Tom, you ask your question, could I just remind anyone asking a question, please press and hold the gray button on the microphone so that people on the webcast can hear. Thank you.
Hi there. It's Domnic Nash from Barclays. I was going to go two, but if Mark's going for three on.
Please don't go for four.
I'm sure I can have subparts. Look, the first one, sort of the top-level question really on REMA. Clearly, you must be pleased that the zonal power pricing has been dropped. Is REMA now basically a damp squib, and are there any concerns over what's left in it or reformed national pricing, the impacts of that on your company? Secondly, is your ambition at Sizewell C the end of new nuclear? Could you just remind me again, what's your view on potentially sort of getting involved with SMRs or other sort of the larger ones? Finally, just a quick one on Centrica Energy. I think there's a slight change in your guidance here, if I'm not mistaken, which was before it was at the bottom end of the range. Now it's at the bottom of the range, caveated to a normalization of market.
Could you just give us sort of what we need to look out for, what our key KPIs are, to know what normalization is? If it doesn't normalize and it is what we currently see, what would be the number materializing for the full year? Thank you.
Thanks, Tom. I'll take the first one then, Russell. I'm sure I'll take the Centrica Energy one. Sizewell C, is it the end of new nuclear? No, it's not. We don't think we've got Sizewell C in there for a while. We've looked at some of the SMRs. We've spoken to Rolls-Royce about their technology. We've looked at X-Energy, an advanced modular reactor business in the U.S. We're talking to people to understand what's going on in technology. We have a competitive advantage because I don't think SMRs are the solution to distributed energy. I don't think we'll see SMRs appearing all over the country because unless you've got a nuclear power station close to you, you're probably not going to be too keen to have one built near you.
Those that have them close to them, they know that they're safe, and they know that they bring really good, well-paid jobs. We, along with EDF, own most of the sites that would be suitable for the deployment of future nuclear technology. I think we're in quite a strong position there. We'd be very happy to look at it. If you're going to deploy first of a kind, then there has to be some risk sharing there. You're not going to find that we're going to come out and say, "Surprise, we're going to put the first Rolls-Royce small modular reactor, and we're going to do it on a merchant basis, and we're going to keep our fingers crossed that everything's okay." There has to be some kind of partnership with the government in terms of risk sharing there. We would be interested.
I think what you'll find is, I think you'll find Rolls-Royce has a 470-meg reactor. I think you'll find three, four, five, six of these on the one site rather than lots and dotted around the country. On REMA, we were delighted that zonal pricing was dropped. Lots of people were against it because they thought it would harm the investment. We were actually against it because we thought it was daft for customers. We think that the future energy market requires customer engagement. If you've got an energy price that changes every 30 minutes just now, it could change every five minutes. If you've got nine zones, you've got 12 local distribution zones, then you've got nine pricing zones, it becomes a complete and utter nightmare. I also thought that the benefits were quite theoretical. We're delighted that that's gone.
In terms of REMA, I think we're going to learn over the next two, three, four, five years as we try and deploy more flexible tariffs. We're going to learn what we need to do. I don't think we know right now what the electricity market has to look like going forward. I'm going to say it's a damp squib, but I think we're going to have to learn. Therefore, the regulator is going to have to be quicker, and the government is going to have to be quicker in terms of how we change things. This is going to be an iterative process, I think, and that will require a complete fundamental reset of how we do things. We won't have 12 months for a consultation, 12 months for a response, and then 12 months for an implementation.
I think we're going to have to be far better at implementing change. That will probably require some different kind of framework. Zonal pricing, we're comfortable that that's been dropped. I think it's in the best interest of customers.
Centrica Energy and where we expect that to go. Maybe we'll just sort of step back first and just remind everybody there's three business units there. There's the LNG business, the renewable route to market, and then the gas and power trading. LNG had a solid first half. We think it's going to be solid in the second half. Route to market, actually, gigawatts under management grew in the first half. That's going in the right direction. It's really gas and power trading that we're talking about. The things that we're looking at in the first half that drove some of the results: it was the gas storage economics, these mandatory volume targets that inverted the spreads, the volatility and the news flows, that was challenging. The third thing was there was no liquidity in the market. People weren't trading.
A lot of market participants got quite badly burned and stepped away from the market. We're very happy with Cassim and his team. They didn't chase the market. They stepped back. We took risk capital off. We ended up with a softer but not a terribly bad position. As you look forward then, it's really dependent on the market conditions and gas and power trading. What are we looking for in terms of normalization and what are we seeing that's giving us a bit more confidence? More rational behavior is returning to the markets. There is more liquidity. There's more people trading. There's more people on the screen to connect with. That liquidity allows us to then step in behind that with taking positions, physical positions, as well as options to support the trajectory going forward. Of course, storage spreads have returned to positive levels.
There's margin available for people to take. Just in the past couple of months, we've increased our gas storage capacity under management by 30%. We're stepping back into the market. We'll continue that trend. You've got to remember that most of the money you make in this gas and power trading business is over the winter season anyway. We've got a bit of a year to go. In the past, we've seen different market dynamics, and we'll wait and see how that plays out. That's the things that we're looking at. Just to reinforce, that's not the only games we're playing, trying to grow elsewhere. Of course, trading already started in the U.S. as a diversification.
Thanks. We'll go to Jenny, then we'll go to Ahmed and then Harry. We'll come back to you, Pavan.
Thanks very much. Jenny Ping from Citi. Three questions also, please. Firstly, Chris, can I just confirm something you've said in your last couple of lines of your closing remarks talking about narrowing the range to GBP 1.6 billion in terms of EBITDA guidance? So, we're really no longer looking at GBP 1.3 billion-GBP 1.9 billion, and now it's GBP 1.6 billion-GBP 1.9 billion. Can I just check that as a first point? Secondly, Miliband talked to the prospect of a meter consultation or further announcement around the meter rollout in the coming weeks in the recent business session he hosted earlier this week. Can you just talk a little bit of what you're expecting from that announcement? Thirdly, another policy-related question. I mean, the U.K. government seems to want to get quite close to the EU with linking of ETS, etc.
Is there a risk that there's a full integration of the energy market that takes place? If so, what does that mean in terms of the price cap that we currently have in the retail business? Thank you.
Not on the range. I think we can shave the bottom off now. I think you're 1.6-1.9. I have to watch because Russell's within reach. And he's got quite a hard punch. If I was to say, "Yes, that would be right," I'd get a punch in the face. The only thing we don't know, but we think that what we see in terms of the opportunities is that we can firm up that range. I'm quite clear that if we only hit 1.6, I would be quite disappointed. Rather than we're not ready at the moment to see what our new range is. I think Ed was at the Select Committee when he mentioned about meter consultation. I don't know what he's planning, to be honest. I saw him on Tuesday. We were talking about Sizewell. He's pretty busy at the moment. He's very engaged. I don't know.
What I hope they're going to talk about is compulsory installation of smart meters. Maybe a smarter thing. I mean, unless everybody has a smart meter, it's kind of difficult for electricity. You could look and say, "Smart meters for gas, do they actually give you anything?" Probably not. They say they give you meter readers, but you're not going to interact with the gas market in the way that you interact with the electricity market. It's just a guess. I would think if you really wanted this to go properly, you might drop the gas smart meter requirement because it just gives us an allowance to have meter readers. You might make smart meter deployment compulsory.
If you want to go one step further, what I've spoken to government before about is rather than have each supplier responsible for installing a smart meter in their customer, why don't you just carve the country up? Let's go street by street. Our engineers go to number four, it's a customer, they go to number 17, and they go to number 42. If the engineer could just go door to door, then you'd get a quicker and a cheaper smart meter rollout. Obviously, we'd be delighted with that given that we have this smart meter asset provision business. We're even more interested. There's more integration with the EU. Is it a risk to the price cap? I'm not sure how I would see that necessarily following unless you had a full harmonization and you didn't have, for example, NBP and TTF prices.
If you had a full harmonization of prices across Europe, you still have the price cap. You just set it by reference to a price that was less local. Harmonization, I'm sure there'll be some risks. There'll be some opportunities. Certainly, I think we prefer the E mission Trading Schemes to be more harmonized than you've got green certificates, etc. That would make our life easier administratively. Cassim and the team are brilliant at finding opportunities. If we stay deconsolidated, it'll be fine. If we harmonize, it'll be fine as well. There might just be different opportunities. I don't see it as being a major risk or a threat. Excellent. Ahmed
Hi, Ahmed Farman, Jefferies . Chris, you talked about potential extension to existing nuclear power plants. I just wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit more about it. Is that something that we could see visibility this year? Is that something for 2026? What are the potential lifetime extension scenarios? Super helpful to sort of understand that better. I also wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about the residential supply business. What trends are you seeing in bad debts in terms of customer payment behavior? Is there anything significant to call out there for the first half? Thank you.
Thank you. Let me take the first one then, Russell, talk about the bad debt e xtension is existing plants. I'm looking at Dave. Yeah, perfect. Dave Kirwan, the CEO of our power business. Dave sits there. I mean, I'm hopeful we can see something this year, but I don't know, Dave, if you want to.
Sure. I mean, the news on the AGR lifetimes that we shared late last year. Extended Heysham, Hartlepool, Torness. According to those REMIT notices. The indications at the time were there are much. The AGR lifetime mechanisms are well understood. The EDF team continue their diligence and the preparation for safety case. The prospects for additional lifetimes is a watch. We've no new news. In terms of any changes since the last REMIT notice, nothing untoward. No negatives. Obviously, we'll await outcomes of more diligence before any further notice is issued. It's a little bit of as you were, but nothing untoward since with the operation of the fleet.
Y ou thought I was cagey with my answers , so that's even better. You see?
I'm cagier than my boss.
Thanks, Dave.
What's happening in bad debt? Total charge for the first half year was GBP 231 million. If you drill down into that, GBP 159 million was in the residential energy business in the U.K. As a percentage of revenue, bad debt's remained flat, about 3% of revenue. Revenues are down. The actual charge came down. The improvement in the bad debt picture is probably it's not going as quickly as we thought as we've come out of the energy crisis. Many of our customers are still having challenges to pay the bills, and we're tracking that. Not material moves, but maybe the trend's not going down as quickly as possible. The important thing to remember, though, of course, in the residential business, the bad debt charge eventually gets covered by the price cap as an allowance. There's a phasing over time in that, but you get recovery there. That's the main message in bad debt.
I mean, the thing is that we hope to see the regulator taking some steps on this because if you look at the overall bad debt provision level just now, it's about three times what it was a few years ago. We can't continue with something whereby we can't tell who can't pay and who won't pay. The regulator's not doing much about it. There really is something. The people that don't pay have been subsidized by the people who do pay. Every time you add somebody to the don't pay list, it becomes more painful for people. I think we need to see a step change here from the regulator in figuring out what to do. We don't cut people off. Prepayment meters are not particularly popular. The Chairman and I met with the regulator recently, and they're concerned about it. The solution has to be in their hands.
It can't be another. If somebody refuses to pay, we're very limited in what we can do under the regulation. This is a regulatory problem that needs to be fixed. Harry.
Thank you. Hopefully, that's working. So it's Harry Wyburd from BNP Exane. Two from me, please. The first, can I come back to your GBP 1.3 billion-GBP 1.9 billion 2028 EBITDA range? If I've understood correctly, the reason you're more excited about that is that you see more efficiency potential in the business. Is that fair? What has led to that kind of epiphany? I think you've talked about it a bit more today than you have done previously. Is it AI? Is it better achievements on your efficiency so far? Is there any way you could quantify for us what kind of metric you would target financially or otherwise on an efficiency program if you were to launch a more formal one in six months' time? Secondly, on the balance sheet deployment, I guess one of your challenges is you're dependent on a lot of government decisions, right?
That was one of the issues with Sizewell. Obviously, it took a little longer to come than all of us might have hoped. How long would you wait for—I mean, we've covered Rough—but how long would you wait for Morecambe? Is there any bar that if that bar was cleared, you would do something instead of them so you'd move faster? If you saw a fantastic acquisition, would you go for that in the next nine months and say, "We'll leave Morecambe for another day"? Maybe a final addition to that. Getting a high single-digit real return on Sizewell C, you know, it's a lot better than we can get in index-linked bonds or premium bonds like anyone in this room can get. Why not put more in that? Would you wait around to put more into Sizewell C, which from my perspective would be a fantastic deal? I wish I could, but I have to invest in your shares first, and I'm not allowed to. Thank you.
Look, Sizewell C, it's brilliant when you make an investment and somebody says, "Why do you not take more?" We have the right of first offer on any future government sale done along with Amber and La Caisse in proportion to our ownership. Could we be interested? Definitely. It just depends on what else we've got. The question is, could we have done 20% rather than 50%? We could have, but we could also have done 10%. We're looking for a balance. Would we consider acquisition? We are considering acquisition opportunities right now. What we're not going to do is we're not going to sit and wait and keep our fingers crossed that something's going to happen. We're also not going to back—Russell's got a phrase I quite like, which is it's not going to be the first cab off the rank that we'll go for.
Sizewell C took longer than any of us would have liked. Part of that was us shaping the investment with the government. It wasn't just that we were pushing and saying, "Let's get it sorted." We were pushing very hard to get the right terms. If the terms hadn't been right, we wouldn't have invested. I'd far rather be patient and wait and get the right terms. We weren't just working on that. We've been working on other things at the same time. We'll always do that. Morecambe, there's a chance that Morecambe might be quicker than Rough. The reason for that is that you've already got an existing commitment of GBP 20 billion over 20 years to carbon capture and storage. You've got an existing approval process. Track one, track—we didn't apply in track one for Morecambe.
We applied in track two, but we were a bit late to the game. We would have been amazed if we'd got it. We thought it was worthwhile applying. We think we're very, very well positioned for track three when that comes out. Morecambe is about getting approval for an existing field in an existing framework. Rough's about applying an existing framework to something slightly different. It's entirely possible that Morecambe's approval could be in a slightly shorter term. Morecambe, remember, is two reservoirs. We could actually commence CO2 storage, and Morecambe will still produce some gas. You've got North Morecambe and South Morecambe. They're rather imaginatively named. I'm quite enthusiastic. I would rather in February sit—my first preference would be we're sitting talking about great investments.
The second preference would be that we're sitting saying, "Look, I know we've still got too much cash in the balance sheet, but we're working things through." What I don't want to do is to get to 2028 and say, "This is great. We've invested GBP 4 billion-GBP 5 billion, whatever the number is," and then spend the next five years regretting. I probably would not get five years. Kevin would probably fire me. I would rather take our time and make the right investment. We will be very patient and very disciplined, but also very challenging with the counterparts. Look on the efficiency metrics. We see opportunity both for revenue and for cost. The metric I would look in cost, I think, is always: Where are your costs? Where is your OpEx and where is your cost of goods sold? Are they lower or higher?
I do not like getting into all of this crap about, "Let us show you a waterfall," which will explain to you why the cost would have been lower if these five things did not happen. The way that we would measure it is if our OpEx is lower. I think we have got efficiencies probably also in cost of sales. The revenue opportunities might be just as interesting. If you look, for example, we have got 7.5 million residential energy customers and 2.8 million, I think, contract customers and services. I do not know why we have got 7.5 million customers and services because even if they do not buy contracts, like boilers still break down, heat pumps break down, people need their electrics fixed. I think there is as much in the revenue line.
I would expect that we will be able to give far more clarity in February about what targets would be on the cost side and how you would measure that.
Okay. Thank you. In terms of what's changed, is there something that's changed? Is it AI? Is it— AI's sort of changed versus six months ago when you were—
AI's part of it. One of our colleagues here will remain nameless. I was talking to them, I don't know, about three hours after we signed the Sizewell C thing, and I was moaning about something. He said, "Can you not just take today to be happy about Sizewell C?" I'm always impatient, and I'm always looking for more. I said, "Don't worry about the number of my colleagues." There's an element. We can see more opportunity. We can see our operational performance is very, very strong. Sometimes you just have to step back and look and say, "Okay, what can we do things differently?" The developments in technology are helping us to think about that. There's also just something about it. I think if you ever come into the office and you think, "That's it. We're done now.
We're really good," I think you should leave because you're never done. The opportunities are always there. I think the day that I come in, I think, "This is it. I'm going to sit back, put a few up and smoke a cigar." That's the day either the Chairman will come in or I'll go to the Chairman and say, "Look, it's time for somebody else to come and ask for fresh ideas." Just a constant evolution.
Okay. Thank you.
All right. Thanks, Harry. Pavan.
Hi. Good morning. Pavan Mahbubani from JP Morgan. Thank you for taking my questions. Chris, you mentioned there was a commercial opportunity in the meter asset program, and I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on where you see those opportunities and how those could materialize. On the transformation program, you've given a good bit of detail. Do you think that that will require incremental CapEx, and does that feed into some of the uncommitted that's left to spend by 2028 within the budget? I have a couple of questions on Spirit. Russell, if you can help with the phasing of profitability in Spirit between H1 and H2 and help us in terms of how we should think about that, particularly with the disposal of the Cygnus.
Finally, in your release this morning, there was an impairment in Spirit because of an assumed, I guess, earlier closure or shorter economic life. Can you give a bit more detail on what your expectations are now versus what they were before? Thank you.
Thanks. Those two hard Spirit questions are clearly for Russell. I do not think I would say we would remember an impairment. It depends on what you—because these fields, especially Morecambe's, have got a very short time horizon, you have got a liquid curve. That could change every six months. You just have to take the observable prices. The commercial opportunities in the MAP, I think that we have the opportunity to do that for other people. I also think that the MAP business in and of itself is a brilliant business. Dan and Gareth, who run the business, have done an incredible job in setting it up. What it gives us is the opportunity to own, track, and finance small assets. We install the best part of 100,000 boilers a year, probably about 5,000 heat pumps. We are the biggest installer of heat pumps and boilers.
I do not know, 20,000 EV chargers, whatever the number is. If we are able to own and track and finance the smart meter, we could extend that potentially to boilers, heat pumps, EV chargers. We are not ready yet to start to do that. That has always been in my mind in terms of why I would like to go to the smart meter business. If we do that, none of our competitors can do it. We do not have the balance sheet. Russell and the team will make sure that if we do embark on that, we have the ability, as we do with the MAP, to turn up and turn down the investment. If we see a better investment elsewhere, we bring in some third-party capital. I think there are opportunities for other energy suppliers.
There might be opportunities even in other countries as people will go through a smart rollout. There is a lot of opportunity in our existing customer base just now and to differentiate ourselves commercially. Transformation, I would not expect there would be major additional CapEx, but there will definitely be implementation costs, and that would mostly be OpEx. The technology costs will be mostly OpEx as you go through a software as a service. As we lay out what we expect to achieve, we will also lay out what it will cost. What we will not do is go back to what we used to do years ago when I was a CFO. I have to say I inherited the practice, is to separately identify in the middle column all the transformation costs because we used to spend hundreds of millions a year on taking costs out.
We have never spent GBP 400 million and taken out GBP 200 million across. We felt very good about this part of the financials and this. We will not separate it out, and we will not put it in a different column, but we will tell people how much it costs because there will have to be investment. We cannot deliver material cost synergies or revenue synergies without investing money. We will do that in February.
Good. Spirit. So just to give you a couple of numbers. Of course, GBP 150 million of AOP for the first half of this year. That is down from GBP 245 million last year. What you are seeing just generally across all the infrastructure businesses is reduced income. A lot of that was hedged, and that will continue. The curves are in that dynamic. I think volumes we expect are roughly flat, half one, half two. The sort of hedge price we have got for half two is about GBP 1.11 per therm. Most of that is already in the bag. Now, we have got this divestment of Cygnus. Most of Cygnus goes. It is an asset held for sale at the moment. We will book the revenue. We will book the earnings right through to the close date, and then that will get unwound.
I think overall, we are still okay with the guidance range for Spirit and the nuclear assets of GBP 250 million-GBP 400 million. That implies full year production of Spirit between 695 and 720. Nothing really changed there. It will just be the phasing of the curve that will take most of it. Oh, and then on Morecambe, I think Chris answered most of the questions. That liquid period, it has come down in the first six months of this year. What you do is you do an economic end of life for those facilities and for Spirit, where we were previously more towards the end of the decade. That has come back down to sort of 2027 sort of time, maybe 2028. We will keep watching it. We will be driving efficiencies.
Of course, the game plan for Morecambe is to try and make sure that we extend that asset as long as possible so that it sinks into the future development opportunities.
Yeah. Remember, a few years ago, Morecambe was due to close in 2021. So we'll continue to eke out, and these deals tend to go on. The question you had then, Chris, I don't know if it's getting any online, so.
Hi. Good morning. Charles of HSBC. Two questions for me. First is on British Gas Energy. When we think about the warmer weather we saw this year, could you remind us on your assumptions, when you're guiding, is it based on historic averages or are we assuming a structurally warmer weather pattern? It's the first question. The second one is on central storage and following on the comments about spreads improving. Depending on how that evolves in the second half of the year, could you see a situation where you get closer to the GBP 50 million rather than the GBP 100 million loss? Thanks.
I think the second one should come from Russell, but I would say I would be extremely doubtful. I'm looking at Cassim sitting here. Cassim doesn't look particularly hopeful of trimming GBP 50 million off the losses. Looking, British Gas Energy, we don't assume the historic weather. We assume that we've got—we do see warming, but also that we see more volatility in the weather. That is why developing a different way to hedge the weather, basically, you look at the seasonal norm demands. You make adjustments for how climate change is occurring and about the extremes that we're seeing. Because remember, we're GBP 50 million. When we sat here in February, or whatever we watched from February, we were delighted. We were GBP 50 million. We thought we were having a party in there. We're GBP 50 million down five months later. GBP 100 million reversed.
Had we not changed the way that we hedged and forecast on the weather, that 50 would have been well over 100 in my view. We do adjust that as we go forward. We're always learning from experience there. Russell, what do you think? What's the chance of the 50?
That's not very likely, no. Just to sort of remind you, you do have sort of close to GBP 100 million cost base there. We do have some hedges this year from previous years that we're working through that gave a bit of support in the first half. We've been taking out some of the indigenous production. There's currently 16 BCF in Rough as we sit today. Of that, 13 BCF is the indigenous or the cushion gas. That was 14 at the beginning of the year. We've taken out 1 BCF of that cushion gas. We will continue to do some of that in the second half of the year. That might support revenue a little bit. I'm still very comfortable towards the top end of the 50-100.
Fraser, have you got some online questions?
Yeah.
Are these really online questions or are these your questions?
They're certainly not my questions. Yeah. The first one is from AJ Patel at Goldman Sachs on gas storage. Can you please detail the path for gas storage? If no support is given, how much cushion gas can you extract, and what would be the cost of closure? Would you be interested in an interim measure where you're paid an annuity to keep the facility open, and what could that look like?
Excellent. Russell just mentioned about the gas that we would take out. The cost of closure is about GBP 300 million. That is a decommissioning cost provision. If AJ is offering an annuity, I would be delighted to take a bit of a look. As CB pointed out, we have spoken to the government to say, "Look, do you want to open, for example, for this winter?" The discussions are that we will not inject subsidized gas this winter, but that does remain an opportunity. You have OpEx in that business of about GBP 80 million. You have to have a spread between your summer and winter gas price in order to cover the OpEx and then to make a bit of a profit as well. We would absolutely be open.
We are not in the business of holding account to anybody's head. We have had very constructive conversations with the government. They know the position. I think they would like to keep it open, but they have to make sure that it passes the value-for-money test. We will see.
Thank you. The next one is from Pierre-Alexandre Ramondenc from Alpha Value. Following the divestment of your stake in Cygnus and your ambition to transition towards net-zero operations, what's the rationale for retaining Spirit Energy? Could a full disposal be considered, or is the business too integrated with your other operations? Any clarity would be appreciated.
A full disposal of anything we've got could be considered. We don't have anything that is so fully integrated that we couldn't dispose. That applies across the group. Spirit, after the disposal of 46.25% of Cygnus, has got 15% of Cygnus. It's got the Greater Markham Area, and it's got Morecambe, and it's got a bunch of decommissioning. If we were to dispose of Spirit, we'd be trusting that somebody who would take Spirit, we'd fund out, we'd pay for all the decommissioning, rather than as happened not that long ago, take the money and run away. We'd have to have control over the decommissioning. We wouldn't want to sell Morecambe because we see that as a big opportunity. Greater Markham and Cygnus, the two remaining gas producing fields outside Morecambe, for the right price, I would sell them.
Look, the price that we got for our 46.25% stake in Cygnus was twice our hold value. It was a value decision. We'd do the same for the remaining part of Cygnus and for the Greater Markham Area. I'd like to keep Spirit. Spirit was at GBP 1.3 billion or something of decommissioning liabilities. That would be an awful lot of trust you would place in somebody. We will execute the decommissioning. We will hopefully convert Morecambe into the U.K.'s largest or maybe even the world's largest carbon storage facility, which over a 40-year life will take 25 megatons of carbon every year. To put that into context, the U.K. wants to get to the point of storing just over 100 megatons a year. This would take 25% of the U.K.'s planned storage. It's a huge opportunity.
Thank you. Final question as it stands, although classically a three-parter, from Bartek Kubicki at Bernstein, part one. Could you confirm the trend of households moving away from regulated tariffs to fixed tariffs? What does that mean for margins and competitive pressure? Would it also mean lower protection against extraordinary costs such as higher bad debts, as there will be less and less people on regulated tariffs? I'll maybe pause there and let you answer that one first.
Russell, that's a good one for you.
Yeah. So we are seeing a trend of people moving away from the price cap onto fixed rate tariffs. That's going probably in the 25%-30% sort of range now. We're seeing more churn. We're seeing more people moving between suppliers. For what we have to do is make sure that we're competitive in that space. We're trying to make sure we've got profitable tariffs out there that keep our customers for longer. Where did that trend go? It's hard to tell, but certainly we're seeing a movement up in switching and movements to fixed rate tariffs over the past year as we come out of the crisis. That's the main part of it.
Thank you. Second part. What triggered the depreciation, sorry, excuse me, the depletion of liquidity on markets in the first half of 2025, and what needs to happen for liquidity to come back?
Look, I think we've mentioned earlier on that. It was, I think, geopolitical-driven volatility. Some things driven by comments from individuals, heads of state, and the like. You can't call that. We sat on our hands a little bit. We took risk capital off it. Other people did as well. Just fewer people in the market. It's just a reaction to the events. If we saw that level of volatility and it was fundamentally driven, you'd have seen an increase in liquidity, more people would have been in the market.
Thank you. Third and final bit. Are earnings from route-to-market increasingly linear with the higher level of capacities contracted?
I wouldn't say they're increasingly linear, but the RIT market services have always had a good substantive base of contracted revenues. If you go back to the teaching we did last December, you can see we unpicked that a little bit in terms of the type of contracts, the type of PPAs that we write for customers across Europe. I'd say that's broadly the same, but still a very important part of the earnings mix for that business.
Fantastic. That's everything we have on the webcast.
Oh. One question. Let me make this the last question so people can get away. I know it's a busy day for people.
Hi. Sorry. Mark from Citibank. Just a real quick question on the dual-run IT costs. I think you said it is GBP 9 per customer in the first half this year. You have moved over onto a 100% onto Ignition platform now. Does that all come off? Is it as simple as just taking that and having the cost savings there, or how should we think about it?
I mean, remember, we had a monolithic SAP platform called ECC6, which was designed for utilities. We had all our energy customers on there, but we also put our services customers on there. It was not designed for that, but we thought that was efficient. They are still on that. The system will not close until, I think, the end of next year. End of 2026 is the aim, I think, for the ECC6. I see Darren, our Chief Technology, also nodding there. We still have those costs in there, but that will be turned off at the end of 2026. Russell, I do not know if there is anything to add on the dual-run in the energy business.
No, that's it. Total cost per customer was GBP 97. That's up slightly from the end of last year, of that GBP 9 dual-running cost. Yeah, you've answered it.
Yeah. Excellent. With that, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for your patience. Thanks for, obviously, for those of you that attended on Tuesday as well for very, very short notice. It has been a very busy week. We're happy with the operational performance. There's a lot more to go for commercial. We look forward to updating you on our results for the full year in February and also on our transformation program and what you can expect from that as we go forward. Thanks very much.