Welcome everybody to the 2025 Marks & Spencer AGM. We are here in Waterside House, which is our support center in Paddington, and we have with us, I am guessing, about 50 shareholders here in the room. A special welcome for all of those who struggled through the heat wave to attend. There are a few people here dressed for the occasion in shorts and t-shirts, entirely appropriate. Our air conditioner is struggling a bit. I think I am the only person in the room—no, not quite the only one wearing a suit, but there we are, traditionally unfashionable. I wanted to introduce the team, first of all. Stuart Machin needs no introduction, our Chief Executive, and Alison Dolan. Alison is making a debut appearance at Marks & Spencer AGM. She joined us earlier in the year as our new Finance Director, succeeding Jeremy Townsend, who has retired, with our thanks.
I want to welcome also the rest of the board. You cannot see them here, but they are sort of—think of them as in the ether here digitally with us, all attending. Fiona Dawson, our Senior Independent Director and Chair of the Remuneration Committee. Evelyn Bourke, who is Chair of the Risk and Audit Committee. Tamara Ingram, who is Chair of the ESG Committee. Of course, Justin King needs no introduction. Ronan Dunne and Cheryl Potter. They have been a great team. Just so you know, particularly in the last few months, the board have put in a shift. You know, they work very, very hard for your company. I would like to think we are the hardest working board in the FTSE 100, but my colleagues might not like me to say that, but I hope we are. Anyway, there we are.
Now, also we have with us Anita Anand. So, Anita, welcome back.
Thank you very much.
You have been with us the last few AGMs. I'm not quite sure. It must be three now.
Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah.
Feels like an old friend.
Good.
Anita, as you know, is a very well-known broadcaster with the BBC, but she's also famous for her podcast, which is called Empire.
That's it.
By the way, if you haven't listened to it, you should do, because 75 million other people have now. I gave you a bit of a punt last year, didn't I?
Yes, yes.
As a result, the listening figures have soared. I hope they're now there soared.
To you, Archie. Thank you very much.
Anyway, absolutely brilliant. Okay, now I'm going to make a few opening remarks, then we'll have a more detailed update on performance from Stuart, and then we'll come on to the Q&A, an important part of the meeting. We have set aside around about an hour for that. We'll see how we go. Anita's going to be in charge. Look, it's hard to remember now, but it was about seven years ago that we set out on our journey of turnaround at M&S after 25 years of—it's unkind to say drift, because there have been good moments and good things done, but the business had not succeeded in really upgrading itself, updating, turning to face a more contemporary customer, updating its store portfolio, replacing aging systems, driving into online. We were then 17% online. We're now 33%. We have made very good progress since then.
Since Stuart took over, he's reshaped or he's restated the program as reshaping for growth. That is because we want not just to modernize the business, but also create a business that can grow—growth in profits and in sales. The reason for that is we want ultimately the share price to trade at a higher multiple so that all the shareholders benefit from profit growth. In addition, over time, as we invest for growth and as that investment pays off, we can start to grow our dividend and shareholder return. We're not at that stage yet. We are growing the dividend, but we're at the foothills of what we can achieve. That is the big program. It is very important that we believe, and I want to stress to you that we think there are tremendous opportunities ahead.
The opportunities are not just what we can do well; it is what we know still needs to be sorted out in our business. Our supply chain, both in clothing and home and in food, needs a huge amount of investment and modernization to catch up and go beyond what other people are achieving. Our store base, we have closed a lot of stores. We have opened some fantastic new stores, but we still have a lot of aging legacy stores. We love them all, but some of them are really quite old, and they do need replacing. Every time we do succeed in replacing an old store, we see spectacular improvements in profit and in sales and in customers. We have a long way to go.
Of course, that includes, as a topical subject, our systems, because we have a mix of modern systems recently installed and legacy systems. Having that mix now is one of the things that can hold the business back. By the way, it makes it more difficult to defend against cyber, a subject I'm just going to come on to. It is entirely realistic, we think, to believe that these opportunities give us a good platform for growth on top of the outstanding work that has been done on product, on style, on food taste, and certain food innovation. We want the spirit of the turnaround to stay with us. Stuart calls it positively dissatisfied. That is a phrase that has gone into the language at M&S. We want people to come to work to improve the business.
We want people to have a humble attitude to what we've achieved and an ambitious attitude to what we can achieve. That is because it is that restlessness that needs to drive the business going forward and that energy for change. Where do we got to? We came into this year-end with pretty strong momentum, and we produced, you will have seen at the year-end, a set of financial results, GBP 870 million profit, the best result for years. Probably we've had the strongest U.K. performance for any food business over the last four years, give or take the discounters. Substantial improvement in profit and in sales and in market share. In clothing and home, we had saw growth in market share in most categories, including women's wear and return to style, and customers, contemporary customers, family customers coming back to the business for the first time for years.
We came out of the year-end also with a strong balance sheet, by the way, GBP 420 million on the balance sheet. A huge turnaround from a few years ago when we had GBP 2 billion of debt and we were not even investment grade. We did come into the year-end with a bit of a spring in our step and confident about the future. Of course, in business life, events have a way, just as you think you are doing rather well, of tripping you up and putting you on your backside again. That is, of course, what happened to us. Easter Saturday evening, Stuart gives me a call at 8:00 P.M., and on the whole, it is the call that no chairman wants to receive. By the way, it is not that unusual for Stuart to call me at 8:00 P.M.
Normally, he's just been around the store and wants to tell me about all the issues. He gave me a call at 8:00 P.M., and he said, "We believe we've got this incident, and we're calling a crisis management team meeting for later tonight." That was the beginning of, I think it's fair to say, a journey into an out-of-the-world, out-of-body experience for all of us for the next month or so. It has been a serious cyber incident. You've all seen that. It is a very unusual business experience because this is about criminal actors in the U.K. or in the U.S. or wherever they are seeking to stop people shopping with M&S to disable our business. The best defense against it is to close down systems.
That is why we have had to go back to doing things actually the way—I can say this—the way we did this when I started out my career in retail, a bit of clipboards and pen and paper. It does take a long time to bring the systems back, and that is what you are seeing now. It has been a very intense period and a very stressful period for a lot of people, but we are on the way back. What I did want to do is just use this moment—we are going to talk about cyber later, I am sure people want to ask it—I just want to use this moment to say a huge thank you. There is a thank you, by the way, to shareholders. Incidentally, our share price is about the same as it was four months ago. Shareholders have been pretty supportive.
That includes the large shareholders I've spoken to. To employees, so colleagues working in the stores have had to do things very differently. They've had to put in real effort to keep our stores going, and we're very grateful for that. We've had incredible support. Customers, I mean, we're not asking for sympathy. This is our problem, and we will solve it. The customers in the main have been tremendously supportive. There's been so much goodwill, and it's really been quite moving. Finally, of course, for the team here in Waterside House, our technology team, I mean, people have gone sleepless, literally sleepless nights for nights on end to try and address this problem. It's been really quite inspiring to see the way people have come together for our company. We are very grateful for that.
I just want to say to you, we're getting through it. Every week, new systems are coming back. Now, hopefully, in a few weeks' time, we'll be humming. Our stores have been trading, by the way, throughout. It's the online business that's been impaired and some of the internal systems. We're on our way back. I think we're hopeful that we'll be up to full roaming speed very shortly and back to the business that we know we can be. Hopefully, when we all meet this time next year, we'll all be able to have a bit of a laugh about it, but it doesn't feel like a laughing matter right now. Thank you for that. We are going to come back to talk, and we can answer questions on this later.
Now, Stuart is going to give us the line and length, the detail of our recent performance.
On video.
Good.
W e are going to pretend that you're live , but you are on video.
Last year, we delivered a strong performance with profit before tax and adjusting items of GBP 875.5 million, which was an increase of 22%. We grew free cash flow from operations to GBP 443 million and closed the year with net funds of over GBP 400 million, while continuing to grow returns to shareholders through an increased dividend. We are now in the best financial health we have been for nearly 30 years. We continue to make progress in our quality and value credentials in food and in fashion, home, and beauty. We have made good progress in improving style perceptions and broadening our appeal. Last year, I said we were at the beginnings of a new M&S. I said this deliberately because while we continue to make progress in transforming M&S, we still have so much to do, and there are so many opportunities ahead of us in future years to drive growth.
Let me now turn to the businesses. In food, sales increased by 8.7%, with like-for-like growth of 8.6%, driven by volume growth, which has outperformed the market now for over three years. During the year, we upgraded the quality of more than 1,000 products and launched over 1,400 new lines. This consistent drumbeat of innovation has driven increased customer interest and frequency. Our continued investment in quality and innovation is paying off through sales value and volume growth. It is this virtuous cycle that enables us to continue investing in price and quality for our customers. These actions have enhanced customer perception of M&S value, which has reached a 10-year high. Our mission is to become a shopping list retailer, and we are seeing more customers choose us more often for their everyday shopping.
Our focus is to continue on fixing the backbone of M&S food, as this is going to be critical to our future growth. This means making sure we have the right long-term agreements with our supplier partners, the right systems, and the right capacity in our network to get ahead of the growth curve. The team are making good progress on this. We continue to sign long-term supplier agreements, which allow partners to invest and grow capacity. At the year-end, we completed the rollout of our forecast ordering and allocation system, which helps us get the right stock to the right stores at the right time. We have taken the first step in modernizing our logistics network with plans to open a new modern distribution center in Bristol next year. In summary, we are on track.
Alex and the food team are making really good progress, but we have a lot more headroom to grow, and I believe we're well on our way to doubling the size of our food business. Turning now to fashion, home, and beauty. Sales increased 3.5% with like-for-like growth of 4.4%. We've now outperformed the market for over three years. Our commitment to offering customers first price, right price as part of our trusted value strategy meant full price sales mix was broadly level on last year. An example of this is kidswear, where we've removed our promotions but invested in lower prices on everyday essential items. We have continued to improve our style credentials further, particularly in women's wear and menswear, which has been reinforced with strong seasonal campaigns and some brilliant collaborations.
Today, we are broadening customer appeal and attracting new customers across our fashion, home, and beauty business. We've made good progress over the past few years, but now our focus turns to addressing the backbone of our fashion, home, and beauty business. Recently, we appointed John Lyttle into the role of Managing Director, and John will help us face into those big things in transforming our supply chain, merchandising, planning and ranging, and also accelerating our online growth. Since John's arrival, he spent his first month working in our stores and across our distribution centers to get a feel for the M&S business and the opportunities ahead. In summary, we're on track, but we need to knuckle down and execute this next phase to deliver further growth and profitability. Moving now to international, we had a pretty challenging year.
Our sales were down 8.5% owing to the performance in India and a softer fashion, home, and beauty order book in our franchise markets. It did get better in the second half of the year. Over this next year, we are resetting our joint venture in India under new leadership. We will also be implementing new operating principles and updating all of our commercial terms with our franchise partners. This will enable us to move to a more trusted value position because we're going to invest not only in style but also in value across our international markets. In summary, international continues to be a growth opportunity in the medium term. Our strategy remains the same: to build a capital-light global omnichannel business that brings the best of M&S to the world.
Turning to Ocado, just to remind you, last year's results for Ocado Retail are reported separately by Ocado Group. I wanted just to give you a very quick update. Sales were strong in the year, with growth of over 15%, driven by sales of M&S products, which grew over 20%. Today, M&S volumes represent over 30% of Ocado Retail volume. While the top line is an improved position, profitability remains limited by high service delivery costs and continuing high fees for the old Hatfield site. In the year ahead, there will be an increased focus to improve delivery efficiency and to maximize capacity from the existing network. It is critical we improve the productivity and the profitability of Ocado Retail before investing in new capacity. Finally, from this financial year, we will be consolidating Ocado Retail's financials into M&S as part of the terms of the original joint venture agreement.
This has no impact on our share of the business. In summary, last year was another strong year of performance across M&S. We have now delivered three years of growth in sales value and volume, growth in market share, growth in profits, and improved return on capital. While we have made progress across so many of our priorities, we are clear there remains so much more to do. We look at this as a positive. These future opportunities provide future growth, and that is what energizes us. Our consistent performance demonstrates our momentum, and I am confident that with continued focus on our plan and the execution of our plan, we will deliver future growth.
Thank you, Stuart, for that excellent presentation. This is the moment when we turn to the main substance of the meeting, which, of course, is the questions and answers from shareholders. I'm going to hand over the meeting to Anita, who's going to orchestrate the questions. The reason we do that is because there's a long tradition at M&S AGMs of having a good sort of repartee, straight talking between shareholders and ourselves. We very much believe in delivering straight answers to straight questions. Anita's role is to make sure that that happens, that the questions are put to us. I know, Anita, if you feel we haven't answered the question, we'll come back.
I will. I mean, that, yeah, absolutely. Archie, thank you very much.
You're good at that.
Thanks. I mean, that is my role. I'm delighted. Thank you very much for inviting me back to be your advocate in the room. That really translates as this is your AGM. I'm here basically as a cipher for you. We get lots of questions even before the AGM. As you can imagine, we try to get through as many of these as possible because you want answers. This, as Archie says, is a time for straight talking. These are things that you want the board to hear. These are the things you want to ask the board, and you want straightforward answers to them. If at all I feel like, you know, you're not getting an answer, I will push that. I will do on your behalf.
But what I've done is we've got lots of questions that are kind of similar or in the same food group, if you like, to speak Stuart's language. When they are sort of very, very similar, I kind of put them together on the same shelf, and I will ask one question which summarizes those. You can imagine Archie's alluded to it already, that cyber issue. Although it does not fall in this financial year, it is the whopping great elephant in the room, and you want to know about it. We will talk about it. Strictly speaking, the rules of the AGM would mean that it does not fall in this financial year, but how could we not talk about it? As I say, we will try and get through as many questions as we possibly can.
Often we do get questions from shareholders which are about specific products, specific stores, specific shareholder issues, and they're not really sort of useful at a forum like this when there are so many of you joining online and so many of you here with broad questions. I'm assured that this panel here will get back to you, and you will have the answers published actually online as well. Shall we start? I mean, are we sitting warmly? It is one heck of a warm day. I think it's only fair that we put them straight in the hot seat. We need to talk about this thing that happened. These are questions asked by Christopher Metcalf, Joseph Buxton, Margaret Taylor, Sarah Bennett.
If I can paraphrase what they're saying, it clearly feels like you have been hit by a truck, and it has felt like that. Is there anything you could have done to get out of the way of the truck? In other words, could you have done anything to prevent this?
Yes. Of course, this is a question that I'm sure we'll be asking ourselves for the next 12 months. There's always something that could have been done. We owe it to everybody to examine that and get all the facts on the table. Stuart, do you want to?
Shall I kick us off? I was talking about it just as some shareholders came in. I mean, we are sort of in our minds trying to move on. If I just go back, I think the first thing to say is running M&S, you don' t think you are ever going to manage a cyber incident. You are here to transform the company. You are here to grow the company, serve customers with a great bunch of colleagues. We have had a very clear transformation plan, and this was a big disruption for us. If I am honest, Anita, it has taken its toll on us individually and collectively as a leadership team. Just going back, talking about it again is quite difficult because although we have sort of analyzed it and gone through it, we are trying to move on to the phase of recovery.
What I would say to shareholders is actually a year ago in our capital markets day, we talked about the need for tech investment. We are very transparent in our capital markets day. We laid out three big priorities for growth. Archie mentioned store rotation. We also outlined supply chain, and we also outlined technology because we have legacy stores, legacy supply chain, and we have legacy technology. However, what I should call out is although I and the team a year ago very transparently said this would be red at the moment and we will be constantly investing more in our technology, that was not the way the attack happened. Just bear with me one moment on that. Actually, it was just over a year ago we quadrupled our investment in cyber.
I remember our new head of cyber joining and I talking to Steve and saying, "Whatever we need to do, we should do. You and the team are experts." We actually trebled the amount of colleagues that worked in the cyber team because that was Steve's advice. We did that straight away. We increased our investment in tooling and surveillance. I'd be honest, I never thought it would happen. Now, in hindsight, when you look at even the latest data, that 43% of U.K. businesses in a year have had a cyber attack, it's almost a case of when will it happen to somebody. I'm glad we invested then. I'm glad we continue to invest. We also run a simulation exercise about nine months ago.
That simulation exercise is where you hire people to test, attack, try and get into your infrastructure, and you run what we call the emergency sort of procedures, the business continuity procedures, which actually we kicked in, as Archie said, Easter Saturday at 10:00 P.M. We ran that exercise nine months ago, and I'm very grateful we did because running that exercise meant on my phone here, I knew exactly who to ring if I needed advice. We had a list of experts, a list of partners to call from because one thing we got told, and I've been told ever since, is you actually do not always know what happened, and it takes you time in this discovery phase to really figure it all out.
I think the good news is if you look at some organizations, the activity, or they call it threat actors, are sometimes in the environment for weeks and in some cases months. We detected it not as quick in a couple of hours, but it was hours, not 10 days, which is the average. We detected that because the team saw the activity within our online website. What we did immediately is go straight into business continuity. I'll be honest with you, I do not really like going back to those days. It is quite hard, to be frank, because you recollect the calls. We had calls from 10:00 P.M., 12:00 midnight, 2:00 A.M., 4:00 A.M., 6:00 A.M., and we did that for three days to really try and understand what had happened. For those who do not know, I am a bit of a control freak.
I like the detail. I like to know what goes on. I like to cross the T's and dot the I's. It's an episode you can't do that immediately. It takes time. You're in the hands of experts trying to give you good advice. I think the good news is the sense of purpose that everybody had was extraordinary. The sense of responsibility that we took our job, by the way, my job as the leader of the organization, you know, my concern was firstly, what do we need to know and how do we communicate to customers? How do we communicate internally to our colleagues? How do we find out what's gone on and what action we need to take?
Therefore, in hindsight, what you would say to everybody, and by the way, I'm sorry, this answer is a bit longer than expected, but many CEOs rang me the minute we announced it to our customers. One chief executive rang me and said, "I really feel for you because this will be the hardest thing you have ever done, probably in your life." He explained to me what happened in his organization. I said, "I definitely feel that, but I think we'll get over it quite quickly. We're still finding things out." He said, "It will take a lot longer than you expect." He said, "I'm lucky. Mine never hit the newspapers. Yours will be quite public." I said, "I'm hoping not." 35,000 articles later, he was right.
He also said to me, "We sort of got away with it quite lightly." Even when he left the organization two years later, they were still recovering. I said, "That feels a very long time. I think we'll be recovered a lot quicker than that." My summary is this: we've invested a lot, and we will continue to invest in tech, not just cyber. The good news, we're accelerating that plan even quicker than we laid out at the capital markets day. We're trying to modernize. I have to be honest, I haven't been pushing the team to rush. I've led the team to say, "Let's get the work done. Let's make our systems secure. Let's make sure we accelerate the modernization program in tech." There is one final point. Obviously, this was accessed through what we call social engineering.
I have to be honest, a term I never heard of. Social engineering is where they access through a third party and through trying to get into your systems, not through the systems, but through sign-ons. That is something that, although it's out there as a risk in every organization, it's something we have absolutely not just doubled down on, but trebled down on since.
Okay. I mean, that's interesting because there seems to be sort of a two-phase thing about this. There's one, you know, the storming of the gates, and then there's one of getting the people who are in the system out of the system. I mean, this is a question you've sort of touched on earlier. You were surprised when a CEO said, "This is going to take a long time to get over." Angela Bolton, Tessa Dunning have put it this way: why is it taking so long for you to recover? It feels like it's taking a very long time to get back to normal.
This is one of the, I was going to say annoying questions, but I do not mean that in disrespect to Angela and Tessa. It is a very good question. You do get asked it all the time because people think that if your systems, you take down your systems to protect them, they think like you change the fuse and turn them back on again. Unfortunately, it does not quite work like that because bringing them back up again has to be done very, very carefully. It is not good news to have one cyber attack. You really do not want to have another. It has to be brought up in a very protected way. More than that, some of those systems have to be rebuilt and rebuild them. It is a crash program, but rebuilding does take time. As Stuart says, most companies take months and months to rebuild.
We just would say in our trading, we've been trading through hours, so we shouldn't get too overexcited. The question is, when are we going to be back to full speed, particularly online?
Hopefully, we'll give us a forecast.
Hopefully in a few weeks. I laid out at the results day, which was also a big press day, that it would take all of June and all of July, maybe a bit into August, but definitely by July. We have 800 applications, and I've learned more about these applications in a couple of months than I ever thought I would even need to learn. It is very complex. We have been tidying those applications up, not opening all of them and prioritizing. Archie's point is a very good point. We were very lucky that we protected our stores very quickly because through the incident, we made the decision to shut things down because I was not really prepared for the risk of not shutting them down.
Now, shutting things down is quite a big thing because you're literally like chopping off all of our Donington systems at the knees and then saying, "Worry about rebuilding them later." If someone got into our environment and took everything, we'd have no company. You take those decisions there and then, and then you worry about rebuilding them. We are currently rebuilding. Stores have remained open. Online, half of online is open, i.e., not click and collect, not the full range, but that is on track. Within the next four weeks, we're aiming for the whole of online to be fully restored and open. We have to replenish Donington, get all the automation back up and running, restart the engine all over again. I'll be going there to see it.
I'm really hoping by August, the majority of this is behind us and customers will see the full M&S.
Okay. Look, I mean, you've got to understand that this is such a big story. We've got another question on it. Again, as I point out to all of you, it's not in this financial year, but I'm going to allow it because it's such a big issue. We have a question submitted on video by Richard Schaefer. Let's play that now.
During the crisis, a number of my friends joined rival websites to purchase clothes. How do we win them back?
It's a good question. You lose them. Could you ever get them back?
Yeah, it is a good question. And obviously, that's very forefront of mind. Remember, we have been trading the stores throughout. So we've been present for people who want to buy their clothes or their food. And actually, Kantar revealed they do this survey of market shares, and our market share performance, our like-for-like sales performance in food has been strong throughout. So we shouldn't get too doom and gloom. Online, and people are habituated to buying online, hasn't been available. And the consequence, as Richard says, is people who need their clothing have gone elsewhere. That's very painful for us. We don't like to see that. But of course, we're going to have to win them back in the autumn. And to win them back, we have got plans.
We have. I mean, I think there's a couple of things. Firstly, I should say thank you. The customers in this room, shareholders, our customers have been unwavering in their support. I mean, I've tried to reply to as many customers directly as I can. We have had a lot of support. That isn't taken for granted. We should not take that for granted because we've served more customers last year than ever before, 60% of the population. We appreciate that. We shouldn't take it for granted. Our food business, our customers are shopping as usual. Online does worry me slightly because we want to get online fully back, click and collect back. We wrote to 500,000 customers last week for those customers to compensate them for their inconvenience if they had a canceled order. We wrote to 500,000 last week.
We are going to go back. Some of you have written to me in the room because I've replied to you about Sparks. We did have a really good relaunch plan for our loyalty program this year. It is going to be a few months behind now because it isn't in the priority order. We are going to use Sparks to recommunicate, reengage. For example, if we've missed your birthday in the last few months, we're going to make it up to you. There are things like that. We do appreciate the support we've had. We need to just get back, get our product back online, get the stores in even better shape by being in stores every weekend. We are okay, but we're not as good as we should be.
By the way, there's something we're going to take as a leadership team because let's be honest, every CEO says we deliver great service. I think we try to, but I don't think our service is as good as it should be all of the time. I would love us to come back with a different way of serving customers, better service, especially in our fashion business. I think we've got to come back stronger.
Okay. I mean, I feel bad, but I will do it anyway. I mean, you've just talked about being supported and the public being supportive of you. You may not find this next question so supportive. Maybe, Archie, you can deal with it. Fair warning. Will the board accept that this is a major failure of systems and the Chief Exec should take full responsibility by reducing his bonus?
I think that is a question for me.
It's a question asked by Kevin O'Sullivan, I should point.
Okay, thank you, Kevin. Look, the first thing is all our pay is performance-related. Our general philosophy is if the shareholders do not do so well, the management team do not do so well. Of course, the financial effect of the incident will be reflected in bonus and incentive payments in the year ahead. It happened in this financial year, not in last financial year. That is why it does not affect last year's bonus. The Remuneration Committee under Fiona will sit and evaluate where we stand. There will be an adjustment to incentive pay to reflect what the shareholders get. Now, it is too early to say. As Stuart said, we are planning to come back stronger. There is a lot to fight for. We want everybody to go gangbusters for the rest of the year. Let us see where we get to. Yes, of course, we take responsibility.
By the way, I think major failure of systems, that's debatable. Whatever, the main point is whatever impact the shareholders experience is reflected in compensation. That's our rule.
Okay. I mean, of course, there are other questions apart from the cyber attacks. We should get on to those now. Question asked by both Anne Rogerson and Andrew Rogerson. Stuart states that the company is in the best financial health for nearly 30 years. Given this, why has no action been taken to reinstate dividends to the pre-pandemic level? A 20% increase on a low base figure is hardly a reward for shareholders' patience and loyalty, and it is out of line with the return for other stakeholders.
Yeah, this is a question for all shareholders, and it's a question we're asked a lot. Obviously, we think about it a lot. I want to give Alison a chance to respond to that. I did make this point earlier. Just to reiterate again, our plan for M&S is to make it a growing company again. We really believe we can do that. We believe we can substantially increase our share in food and in clothing and home, and we can grow internationally. A growth company is in the interests of all shareholders. To get to growth, there are a number of areas where we need to continue to invest. Stuart's talked about some of those in technology, but it's also in stores and supply chain, as I mentioned.
We need to balance this, the need to invest with the need to generate cash and therefore returns to shareholders. We canceled the dividend during the pandemic because we had quite a heavy level of debt at that time. We pay that off now. We're in a much, much stronger position. We can now start to chart out the path to being able to pay higher dividends in the future. Alison, give us your views.
I mean, I would reiterate everything that Archie has said. Our goal is to maximize total shareholder returns, so delivering strong growth in the share price as well as growing the dividend. We have a lot of opportunity to invest organically in the business. Archie has listed those opportunities out. There will be others. Investing, for example, in our online business as well as in our stores, as well as in our supply chain, will be an important part of how we deliver growth, higher profitability, which in turn will then mean that our earnings multiple will increase, our rating will increase.
The growth that we will deliver via growth in the share price really is a more sustainable form of growth and a higher yielding return for shareholders than simply allocating more cash to increasing the dividend now, which is why we have been quite specific about the capital envelope that we are making available to invest in supply chain and stores and in technology and in our systems. The discipline that we have shown around that has meant a return to investment grade, which again is an indicator of stronger financial health. Focusing on medium and long-term growth for the business and higher profitability over that time period will then allow us over time to increase the dividend as well alongside. It is very much in our plans. It is a question of how we sequence it alongside delivering strong growth organically for the business.
Okay. This one, Archie, maybe you want to take this. It's Michael Green. Last year, you extended the qualification period for post-retirement discount to 25 years from 10, coercing compliance by threatening withdrawal of existing discount privileges, making no transitional arrangements. You rewarded the MD with a GBP 2 million bonus. This also placed valuable privilege beyond the reasonable working life of many of your employees. Is this how Marks & Spencer is going to treat long service and loyalty going forward as it gives out a very negative message?
You know, let me just explain what this is about for everybody in the room. We offer all colleagues a 20% discount. They have a 20% discount card on all their purchases, which is by industry standards at the top end. It is part of a benefits package we offer colleagues. We think that is right. We want them to be shopping with us if they possibly can. In the past, we have had a whole series of things we do to extend that discount to people who no longer work for the company or, in some cases, people who never work for the company. What we found is that managing that became very, very complicated because we did not really know who some of these people were.
We did not know really, in some cases, whether they were still alive, whether they had moved abroad or exactly what was happening. There was quite a lot of, not, I was going to say malpractice, there was a loss of control over the system. We have had to tighten it up. We had tightened it up. We wanted to move. We are in a position where more people had the discount card who did not work for M&S than people who did work for M&S. That just seemed out of kilter. We have tightened up on the criteria. I think we did it in the best possible way. I understand why some people who thought they were going to retire after 10 years and get their card or get their card for a long period of time, they thought they were going to keep it.
Because we changed the rules, they did not understand their disappointment. Stuart, I do not know if there is anything you want to add.
No, I think you've covered it. I mean, this did come up through our colleague straight to Stuart. There's only some subtle points. Colleagues wrote to me. It was one of the items that came up. It really started from people who left but were working with other retailers but kept a discount. Archie, everything Archie said is right, but it actually came through a colleague idea. What we did feel very strongly and what was very passionate with our big group, our business improvement group, is if you've done 25 years, it's such a long period of time of your life and your work life, then those people should definitely keep it, even if they didn't retire. That's the decision we made.
Straight to Stuart as well. People just email you directly and it goes straight to you.
I get a lot of them.
Wow. Okay. All right.
Thousands a week.
Thousands. I can imagine.
It's just giving me Run where any colleague anywhere in the business can talk to the boss. We think that's and gets replied from the boss.
It's very good. Yeah, very challenging as well.
You must have absolutely no hobbies at all. No taboo. Okay. We're going to take a question on video now. It is on the topic of colleague reward as well. It is a question posed by Share Action, who are here in the room as well, around M&S committing to the real living wage. Let's just watch the video question that's been submitted.
In March, I joined over 100 investors in co-filing a shareholder resolution asking M&S to tackle low pay across its workforce. M&S has made a strong financial comeback, but many essential workers like cleaners and security guards are not seeing the benefit.
Millions of families are still struggling with a rising cost of living, and more than 8 million working-age adults in the U.K. are in poverty. The real living wage, it remains the most effective tool to lift people out of hardship, and your customers agree. 91% of M&S shoppers think all staff should be paid the real living wage, not just the minimum.
That question there posed by Peter Watson, Michelle Anderson, and Jennifer Frame. As I say, a question from Share Action. Archie, would you like to?
Yes, thank you, Anita. The first thing to say is I wanted to show that video, although we do not usually show other people's videos at the AGM, but I wanted to show it out of respect for the cause that Share Action are espousing. I think on the whole, all of us in this room anyway can say the sentiments expressed in those videos are sentiments we can all embrace. There is no difference between us about what we would like to achieve. I also want to show appreciation and respect for the way Share Action have engaged with us. We have had good discussions around this. We do not completely agree on the endpoint, but we agree on the principle. Now, let me address where M&S currently is because I think this is important.
Now, from the 1930s onwards, we as a company have had, I think it's fair to say, a very strong reputation for not just paying colleagues well, but also treating colleagues well and evolving in the organization. Famously early on, we introduced colleague care procedures, benefits that help people in their working and living lives. We try and stick to those values today. It's not just pay, and I'll come on to talk about pay in a moment. It's also business involvement. Stuart mentioned National Big called BIG, but it's Business Involvement Group. We have a colleague representative organization that works from the grassroots upwards, electing representatives who talk to the team about how we can improve the business for colleagues and for shareholders. By the way, the chair of National Big comes to our board meeting four times a year.
They're actually coming next week to attend my board meeting on next Tuesday. We involve them in everything. There's no secrets from them. I think that's very unusual as part of our values. This year, on colleague pay, our total pay bill, and this includes national insurance, all right? A bit of it is tax, well, a large part is tax, is going to go up by roughly GBP 100 million. Now, that's a colossal increase for a company that last year made GBP 870 million. A large part of that, we are investing in pay because we believe it's the right thing to do. Over the last five years, ordinary colleague, hourly paid colleague pay has gone up by some 40%. I haven't got the exact figure, but it's around 40%. If you go back beyond that, it's even higher.
We have seen big increases, and I think that's the right thing to have done. We think, so there's no hourly paid colleague who works for M&S directly who isn't paid the living wage, by the way. You might have got all the living wage. The issue is over suppliers who supply us with services. Are they all paying their people the living wage? We think that if you take the total of our colleagues and the supplier colleagues, probably about 98%, but it might be 95% pay the living wage. Is there a gap? Yes, we think there is, and that needs to be addressed, and we are onto it. Last year, there was one group of people, which is the security guards. You will see them in the front of our stores.
Not really guards, but they're there to help customers and make people feel safe. Some of them were below the living wage. They were on the minimum wage, and they have been upgraded. They should now all be on the living wage. There are some other groups that we need to address. We do think it's the right thing. It's not so much, and no, there's a natural issue about poverty, but it's not so much. That is, they're part of our business. They're part of our family. Now, it's a bit more complicated than that. I'll come on to this because some of them are paid, they work out of hours or they work overtime. There are slightly more complicated pay arrangements. I don't want to sort of wriggle out of it.
A basic principle, we'd like to get everybody on the living wage. Of course, we would. There is further to go. We embrace the principle and the objectives that Share Action is espousing, as I understand it. Sometimes I feel that people do not want to take yes as an answer. This is where we part company because what is being suggested is the route to address this problem of low pay is to get large public companies like M&S to include another section of reporting in our annual report. Let me just take you through this. Our annual report is now 220 pages. Ten years ago, it was half that length. I mean, it is a veritable doorstep. I'd like to think everyone in this room had read every page, but I'm afraid that is not going to be true. I'm not even sure I've read every page.
It's just burgeoned. There is another 50-odd pages likely to come in because of the ESG legal reporting requirements, all by the way to audit standard. It is going to get even bigger. The difficulty with this is part of the problem is the more you report, the less people read it and the less useful it is to shareholders. Let's remember, this was originally a shareholder document. It is not a vehicle for every worthwhile cause that there might be that M&S touches to be reported on. There has to be a limit. This proposal would require us to gather data to an auditable standard from, we think, 20-30 different organizations that supply us with people working with us, whether they are cleaners or security people or people doing maintenance or people managing the air conditioning, all paid in different ways.
Some on premium time, some overtime, some Sunday pay. Pull that together in a form we could stand by in the annual report. We think that would be onerous, and we do not think it would serve a great purpose. This is at a time when the FRC are consulting on ways of simplifying and abbreviating annual reports and reporting standards. The issue with this is that as a way of addressing poverty, we do not think it delivers the outcome. We are not against the idea at all, but it imposes a singular requirement on public companies, which are among the better payers and employers in the country, not exclusively, but predominantly.
It imposes no such requirement on private companies, many of whom are the problem when it comes to pay, and no such requirement on public service entities, people providing directly or indirectly public services, many of whom are on the minimum wage and actually they are the real areas where one would look to to improve pay to address poverty. I just feel that this is a powerfully worthwhile ambition. I do not think imposing another requirement for public reporting is the right solution, especially not at a time when more and more companies are delisting the London Stock Exchange and listing elsewhere. We are trying to attract businesses to come and list in the U.K. I accept that there is an idea there. I just do not think this will deliver the objectives. We do have in this country a legislative framework for this. We have the minimum wage.
We have a Low Pay Commission. We have the Labour Reforms Bill, which is meant to be coming later this year, which will also bring in other requirements on employment. There is a right theatre for this. I do not think company annual reports and industrial burdensome reporting requirements are the best way of addressing it. I did want to say that out of real respect for Share Action, we appreciate the way you have engaged. We have had a lot of discussions with your people and with other shareholders about it. I applaud your efforts. Thank you.
Okay. I know that we have not come to the question that so many of you ask all the time, and we spent quite a lot of time on the cyber. There are people in the room. These guys are going to be here afterwards. I am sure you can ask follow-ups, and many of you will have them. Store rotation is such a burning issue, and so many people want to know about it. Chris was, now Jane Dancer among them. I have been doing this job, I mean, as Archie very kindly said, for three or four years, but it feels so much longer. I mean, I do not know. I am taking it as a compliment. I mean, I am not sure you meant it as a compliment. The store rotation is a really burning issue when people see stores disappear from their areas.
They rely on them. These are social meeting points. They are local employers. These questions are particularly looking at stores in Falmouth, renewal of the Aylesbury store. People care about these things very, very much. What is happening?
What's happening?
Yeah.
I think that the good news is in the last 12 months, we've really made some progress on our store rotation program. In fact, as I sit here today, we have about nearly 50 live deals, so to speak, in terms of future pipeline of stores. That original goal that we set out a couple of years ago, 420 really good food stores and 180 flagship four-line stores, we are on track to do in the five to five and a half years, just to give me a few months wriggle room. That is on track. It is a huge effort because it does not matter which store I go to. By the way, just over the weekend, I was in two stores, and I immediately emailed the store development team and said, "Add that to the list urgently," because every store manager wants their store renewed straight away.
This year, we're doing about 37 stores. It doesn't sound a lot in the scheme of things, but that's a huge undertaking to renew 37 stores across the country. Aylesbury, I haven't got an answer for Aylesbury. It is on the pad because we either have to renew Aylesbury if it's somebody in the room that's raised it, or find another site. That is some of the tricky things with the economics on our program. Some of these stores would take so much money to put into that store, we would not generate any return on that investment because they've been left for so long. Therefore, finding a new site in the best location is the most efficient way of using our capital and getting a new store in the catchment. I do apologize to the shareholder that's written, is it Falmouth?
Falmouth, yeah.
I know the area. We have had questions on this before. We haven't got a site yet, but there are a few hundred sites across the country that we're still looking for sites. We won't give up.
Okay.
It's one of the most painful things you have to do, really, is that people are fond of their M&S store. Where we have an old store and it's in a town that's sort of everybody else has closed and we're the last man standing, I understand why people care about it. I'd be disappointed if they didn't care about it. Over decades, M&S has not sufficiently modernized its estate. We're carrying now some of the cost of that. We have to face into the issues. The good news is wherever we do find a new site, as Stuart said, we get outstanding results.
I mean, I just, I suppose categorically, would you say, I mean, some people say it's sort of giving up on the high street by stealth and slowly withdrawing from the stage. I mean, you are categorically saying you're not giving up on the high street.
No, we just want to find the best store in the right location. That is sometimes a challenge. Some of the old high street stores where people have shopped elsewhere and where we are one of the last people standing in a very old store that has not been touched for 50 years proves very challenging. We sort of are holding on to some of those stores. If we find a store in the best location that is not the high street and we will generate a good return, not just for the short term, really for the longer term, some of the deals I have just talked about, the 47, I think it is, deals that we have just done, some of these stores, even freehold stores, are for stores for 5, 10, and 15 years from now.
Some of these stores we will not even open for 10 years, but we will be ready for future growth. By the way, we say no in our property committee. We reject more stores than we say yes to. We are sort of always thinking about what does it mean for now? What does it mean in five years? What does it mean in 10 years? One of my dreads is in 10 or 20 years' time, and maybe I am not here yet. Maybe I am. Somebody turns up and says, "Why did they open this shop?" We have got to be responsible with shareholder money, but we have to go fast. I am hoping by 18 months' time, half of our store estate will be new or renewed. By the way, I do not know any other retailer modernizing their stores.
We should be in a really good position, short, medium, and longer term with our store estate.
Okay, okay. Time is ticking away, I see. Let's take another question. Geraldine Goddard has submitted, "How many of the 1,400 new lines in food were in the free-from range and how many could have been converted to the free-from range by substituting wheat flour? Every Christmas, the range of food I can eat is significantly diminished as you concentrate on those with normal diets.
I love that question, actually. I can't answer it. I'd rather think you can.
Mainly because I agree. Who was the shareholder?
Geraldine.
Geraldine, if you're in the room or watching, I actually agree. Alex is sitting at the back. I actually don't know how many lines. I think it's around 1,000 lines. Of late, I've been asking a few questions on made without, organic, plant, vegan, but also not just vegan, vegetarian. I should say the food team, to their credit, have done some amazing work on health and innovation, whether it's gut health, brain food, taking lots of salt sugar out of foods, some of the new breakfast cereals for kids, one ingredient only. They've done a phenomenal job. I think Geraldine is right. I normally raise this probably twice a month because our availability on made without hasn't been as good as it should.
When we do a range review, very often I ask the question, "How many made without products have we got in this range?" It is normally one or two. What I will say to Geraldine as a shareholder is I know Alex and Catherine, who runs our product development, are definitely working hard this Christmas in particular, but also relaunching the range in the next 12 months and doing more on all of these categories.
Okay. As you know, we get some questions pre-submitted. Sometimes we get them online. Sometimes people are here in the room. Where is Janet Comley or Comley sitting? Put your hand up, Janet, so we can get a mic to you. Oh, I'm sorry. What's your—what is it? Combs, okay. Okay, it might be you. Says Janet Combs.
No, that's not Janet because she's an old friend.
Okay.
Very loyal.
Come on, are you here? Are you shy? No, not here. Okay.
Janet would like to ask a question.
Go for it, Janet.
It's simple. I thought.
Go on.
Because somebody said, "Would you stand and ask the question?" With the agreement by Westminster Council, with the controversy of the arch flagship store, where are we at its development now, having got agreement?
It's a very good question.
Good question.
Shall I dive in quickly? I mean, we were quite relieved when we got permission for Marble Arch because we think it's the right thing to do. Actually, when you look at the plans, when we reopen that store, I actually did the video, by the way, on purpose, the results video in Marble Arch. As you can see from the video, that was the week we didn't have any sleep. We were all looking a bit rough. I did say at the time, I wanted to do this in Marble Arch because it will be the last time I do it in the store looking like this, but I will be back in a few years' time to do it again on our results when it's a brand new store. I'm hoping within five years, we will have a fantastic flagship store.
Now, I'm saying five years to manage expectations because if I said what I'm aiming for, which is really three, now I've said it, everyone will come back to me and say it's three years. At some point next calendar year, we will end up closing that store. By the way, we're currently modernizing Pantheon store, the other end of Oxford Street. It's on track. The food business will reopen before Christmas. We've got a very good plan on fashion there. I'm personally over every little inch of that store on how it looks, how it feels, and how we're going to show up. When that fully reopens next calendar year, we will then close our Marble Arch store, look after all our colleagues.
Hopefully, by the way, Janet, have a food store that end of Oxford Street as well to serve customers because I never realized this, but a lot of the local community have written to me demanding that we still have a small food store that end of Oxford Street. We are determined to find one as well.
Yeah, thank you very much. One Janet's loss is another Janet's gain. Thank you very much for the question. Let's take another one. This is from David John Harbottle. "For many years, I felt that the clothing range for men is somewhat drab and outdated and uninteresting. Can we not develop a more stylish, eclectic range to diversify appeal?"
There are quite a lot of people who would like to think that we—sorry. No, you go. No, go. I know you're going to. Yes. I just say in defense of our team that quite a lot of people think that our menswear has already become a lot more stylish. I'm not saying there isn't further to go, but Stuart, you're—
No, I was only going to say— You're the biggest customer of the menswear department. I'm the biggest customer, but I'm also the biggest critic. I also compliment the team because I'm actually with the menswear team for four hours this evening. I did write to Mitch, our menswear director, yesterday because I saw our women's wear collection. I'd seen the range a year ago, but I saw it ready for this Christmas. The women's wear was just exceptional.
Maddie and I had a few hours with the women's wear team, lingerie team, you know, hosiery, everything. We went through the lot. I texted Mitch, our menswear director, and said, "I hope the menswear is as good as I'm seeing the women's wear at the moment." We have moved on. In fact, we've gained market share in menswear. I have a saying that not everybody likes, "Dump the frump." Every time we see something that we think we shouldn't range, we say, "Delete that. Keep modernizing." It does not mean on trend all the time. It means stylish, quality. We have to still reduce the options, but we have grown share. Good news, style perception has improved. We think there is a big opportunity online. That is also what we want to get after as we go into autumn, winter this year.
I will pass on the feedback to the team this afternoon.
Yes. I mean, can David John Harbottle expect spangly shirts and flares? I mean, how are you going to dump the frump for him?
Flares are in at the moment. Flares are quite in. We want to just—we want to focus on reducing the options, more clarity on style and quality and value. They are on track. We have got a bit of a way to go.
Right. Another question here from Eric Conroy. "I'm reading that a lot of M&S clothing is ending up in dumps in African countries following the explosion of fast fashion. What are you doing to ensure your clothing, used and unused, is recycled, reused, or repaired after an M&S sale?
Stuart, you might want to address this question specifically. There has been a report of M&S clothing turning up somewhere in Africa. We're not sure how that happens because we take great care to make sure that does not happen. I think we're actually going to have a little investigation. The one thing before you answer, a point I've made to people is people often ask about reuse, which is important. The most important thing in clothing is to make sure it's not throwaway clothing in the first place. People buy our clothing, and we like to think that's why we're so keen on quality. They buy our clothing, and you can wear it maybe at work for 50 weeks of the year, and it does not wear out. You can wash it time and again, and it stands up and it's durable.
You are getting the best use of the clothing, and that is the most sustainable thing to do. The problem with cheap clothing, discount clothing, is that so often now people have this huge portfolio in their wardrobe, and they only wear things three or four times. The carbon imprint of something that is only worn three or four times is much worse than something that is worn 40 or 50 times. That is why we believe that our approach is that value for money and quality and durability is the best route to sustainability.
I think that is it. I think that is the key part of the answer. Just on Ghana, when we read the report, we were a bit surprised, but John, who is actually out in factories now touring all our factory suppliers, John is our new Managing Director for Fashion, Home, and Beauty.
Him and the team are going to go out to Ghana, actually, because I've asked them to go and see what's really going on so we can go there and trace back. We have got—I think we could do more on this. We do recycling of clothes in stores. It does not work as well as it should. We have these units. They never look quite great. We have to get a much better system. We see a lot of M&S clothes on secondhand apps. I think that is a good thing because it means you can pass things down. When we ask our customers, one of the biggest things they talk about is kidswear. Please continue investing in quality because I like to pass it down. We should go and really take this seriously and investigate how it is happening.
Okay. Thank you. I'm going to take another from the room. Where is Barry Hyman? Where is Barry? There we are, Barry. Can you just wait for the microphone? He's right here at the front. If he can get the boom mic to you. Barry, if you don't mind standing up, it will help that poor man's back, if nothing else. Okay, great.
We'll be able to see you now.
Okay, great.
Oh, you're there, right? My usual pestering question, Stuart. At your lovely choice of music in the stores.
Oh, gosh.
Loud, very loud, and modern. Could we not perhaps just slip in a few of the gentler, quieter things? Singers like Johnny Mathis and Doris Day from America, Cleo Laine and Matt Monro from this country. Gentle, genteel music so I can have a couple of moments in the store to enjoy it and sit down on the footwear stall and relax for a bit.
Barry, I'm having déjà vu. Have you raised this before?
Last year.
Oh, there we go.
do not worry about it before anything.
Barry is a great friend of the company and one of our most distinguished alumni. It is always great to see him, even though he quite often raises the same question. Barry, I am disappointed because I thought you were saying you want a bit of Mozart in the morning. This is a question definitely addressed to Stuart because he is personally responsible for the entire playlist.
In a way, it is true because we have all had a go at this playlist, by the way, including our Chairman, who I heard had a conversation a year ago and I intervened. It is about one of taste. Barry, let me go and review. Many of our stores seem to like the new playlist, but we do keep changing it. Let me take it away.
I think the most important thing is the volume. The reason I say that is, you know, I'd like to walk around and listen to Maria Callas and all sorts of different people. The volume in some stores is really loud, and I have to say, turn it down. In other stores, you cannot hear it. Let me go and review that. We have not got the best tech systems in our stores on sounding apart from the new stores. I will take the feedback.
Do you know what? Barry, same time next year, we'll have this again. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, okay. I mean, I'm looking at the clock, and we have actually sort of slightly exceeded our time. I hope you forgive us for that. The cyber stuff, there were so many questions, and we've tried our best to crystallize those at the beginning. Let me hand back now to Archie. It's your vote, your timing. It's up to you.
Can I just say, I'm sorry, I don't know your name. Dennis. Dennis, let's grab the mic. It'll come to you. Yes, okay.
Do you want me to grab it? Yeah.
Don't grab it.
Oh, okay. Let's hear from Dennis. Then we do need to close the meeting, partly because some people want to get away, but partly.
I don't think we can.
If you hear me out. We're very happy to answer any questions. We're happy to stay behind. By the way, if anybody, any shareholder has a question at any time in the year, you want to come and drop by or drop us a line, we'd be very, very happy to talk. Dennis, let's hear from you.
Thank you very much. My question is really about the future of AGMs, which I think would be of interest to a lot of people who've taken the time to come along today. Last year, the literature about the AGM positively discouraged you from coming. I see you claim that 51 people came last year. In fact, there seem to be, you mentioned there were 50. I think there's more like 75 or 80 people here today. I think it's important that you still have a proper hybrid meeting so people can come along if they so choose. I think there's a danger that the way AGMs are going to try and exclude live participants, either by having them at ridiculous times in the morning. Thank you for having 11:00 A.M., which is a sensible location.
I think there is a danger that I think shareholders feel that by grouping questions and controlling it, that sort of the more important questions can be avoided.
Okay.
I'm not saying you're doing that. No, no, Dennis, thank you.
Did everyone hear the question? Because I'm not sure.
Could you guarantee that you will continue to have meetings like this where shareholders come along live?
Okay, can I just say, because you were very quiet in my ear, just in case you did not hear on that side of them, because I saw some people craning forward, Dennis, Dennis is your name, is looking for a guarantee that this hybrid live in the room possibility will continue and people will not be discouraged from turning up to these meetings.
Thank you, Dennis. It's a question we have discussed before, as you say. I think the background to this is during the pandemic because people couldn't meet physically. We moved to a full online meeting. One of the learnings from that is our attendance actually went up quite substantially. We wanted to come out of that, keeping that much wider attendance from people across the country who couldn't necessarily get to a physical meeting. I don't think it was ever our intention to discourage people from coming along. You said earlier that our language was that way. That was inadvertent. To take your point, I think we feel that this format works. By the way, there was a time when we used to hold our meetings in Wembley Stadium, which wasn't terribly convenient.
A lot of people complained about the 40 steps and all that sort of thing. Now we're here in Woodside. I think it's a lot more friendly. Our intention is always, we're the most public of public companies. We let people come and there are all sorts of questions inside the AGM. That's part of our role. We're very happy to see people here, and I'm very much hoping that we'll see you all again next year.
Thank you.
Okay.
All right.
Right. Shall I hand back to you? You have either business, I think, after this. Thank you very much for your questions. Thank you for your pre-submissions. Thank you for also coming along. In person, it is always very lovely to see you here in person. As we said, if you have other follow-up questions, they are in the room, okay? They are not going anywhere, they assure me. Okay.
No, we'll be here. Just remember that this session is also obviously on film so that people can watch it in months to come. Or if they're working today, they can watch it this evening. That is one of the reasons why we format it this way. I do not think anybody can accuse us of not having answered some quite challenging questions. I do not know whether the answers work for you all, but we do our best. Thank you all. Thank you for coming. We really appreciate it. Thank you for those who are watching online. We are now going to move to the formal part of the business, and I am going to introduce Nick Folland, who is our Company Secretary and Legal Counsel. Nick is going to take us through the next steps.
Thank you, Archie, very much. Resolutions 1 to 27 are set out and explained in the notice of meeting, which was made available to you on the 2nd of June. I'm going to propose that the notice of meeting be taken as read. I give formal notice that voting on each of the resolutions as set out in that notice of meeting will be by poll. I appoint our registrars, Equiniti, to act as scrutineers. I now declare the poll open. Now it's open. You'll have noticed voting options have appeared on your screen. I'm just going to talk you through the process very briefly. To cast your votes, all you have to do is select one of the options on your screen. That's for, against, or withheld.
Do remember that a vote withheld is not a vote in law, and it is not counted in the calculation of votes for or against a resolution. For each of the resolutions, you can vote, and you can change your vote at any time until the poll closes. You can return to this voting page at any time by just clicking that voting button at the top of your screen. Just as a reminder, the board does not support resolution 27, which, as we said, has been requisitioned by a small group of shareholders coordinated by Share Action. The board recommends that you vote against this, and there is the example on the screen. There is no final submission button. Once you have selected your voting option, you will see a vote received confirmation on your screen. That is a valid vote unless you change your mind before the poll closes.
The poll will close 15 minutes after the meeting has concluded. The final results of the meeting will be announced via the London Stock Exchange and posted on our website as soon as practicable after the meeting. I hope that's been useful, and thank you for your votes. I'll hand back to you, Archie.
Very good. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Anita, for joining us again and holding us to account. Thank you for everybody for coming. Very much look forward to seeing you all next year and hearing from you in the meantime. Thank you.