Currys plc (CURYY) Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Currys Interim Results. We're joined today by Currys Group Chief Executive Officer, Alex Baldock; and Bruce Marsh, Group Chief Financial Officer. Now I turn the call over to Alex. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. A few words from me before I hand over to Bruce to take you through the numbers, then I'll be back with a short update on the strategic progress behind these numbers. But of course, the full strategy update will come in January as usual. And they're promising numbers, too. I mean we're pleased with the strong results and a good trajectory. It's healthy growth that we're posting in sales, profit, free cash flow and shareholder returns and, of course, all resting on a net cash balance sheet. And this is driven by strong underlying performance in the U.K. and Ireland in the face of some quite strong headwinds. We're growing revenue and market share and growing in the areas we said we'd grow with good margin and cost discipline, all of that offsetting most but not all of some unhelpful government cost headwinds. In the Nordics, meanwhile, we're pleased with the accelerating performance in a rapidly recovering market, showing big jumps in profit and cash flow and also showing good sales growth with discipline on margin and on costs. And all of this stems from a consistent strategy that's clearly working, as I'll say a bit about later. But now I'll hand over to Bruce.

Thank you, Alex, and good morning, everyone. So stepping through our first half financials. Group performance continues to strengthen, and we've seen growth across the board. Group revenue was GBP 4.2 billion, up 8% year-on-year and up 4% on a like-for-like basis. Our adjusted EBIT stepped forward by 32% to GBP 54 million, giving an adjusted EPS of 1.6p. Our free cash flow at GBP 84 million was up by 68%, meaning that we finished the half with closing net cash of GBP 133 million. And finally, our shareholder returns in the half were GBP 46 million, which is GBP 16 million of dividend and GBP 30 million of share buyback. So stepping through each market, starting with the U.K. U.K. revenue was strong, plus 6%, driven by our core strategic initiatives, and that resulted in U.K. like-for-like of plus 4%. We were pleased to see our recurring services revenues up by 11%, driven by iD Mobile. Our adjusted EBIT in the U.K. did step back. It stepped back by GBP 4 million due to the government-imposed inflationary headwinds, but that was offset by volume and cost savings. And our adjusted EBIT margin stepped backwards by 20 basis points to 0.8%. Operating cash flow was relatively flat at GBP 33 million, and our segmented free cash flow was GBP 53 million, driven by lower cash profits and increase in adjusting items. Looking at the U.K. EBIT waterfall. As I've said, the U.K. EBIT margin was down by 20 basis points, with gross margin down by 40 basis points and operating expenses favorable by 20 basis points. In both buckets, we were negatively impacted by the government's inflationary headwinds. And you'll remember, at the year-end, we talked about both National Insurance and National Living Wage giving a full year negative impact of GBP 32 million for this year. So stepping through, gross margins, as I've said, backwards by 40 basis points in the U.K. All of that decrease is driven by those increase in colleagues costs across our supply chain and our service operation. Our actual underlying gross margins in the half were positive. Our operating expense to sales ratio was up by 20 basis points, and we saw cost increases and increased marketing across both iD Mobile and B2B, but these were more than offset by operational leverage and cost savings. Moving on to the Nordics. We've seen strong performance across the board. From a revenue perspective, we've seen a big increase in sales. Our reported year-on-year was 11%, on a currency-neutral basis, plus 7%. And like the U.K, like-for-like was plus 4%. Our recurring services revenue were up by 4% on constant currency basis. And we're really pleased to say that our adjusted EBIT almost doubled to GBP 35 million, driving our EBIT margins up by 90 basis points to 2%. Higher profit drove increases in operating cash flow to GBP 43 million, and our segmental free cash flow increased by GBP 44 million, and that's despite the fact that we doubled our spend on CapEx. In terms of the EBIT bridge for the Nordics, you can see that the whole of the 90 basis points improvement in EBIT came from operational leverage. Overall, Nordics gross margins were flat year-on-year as we've continued to maintain a profit-focused discipline of not chasing less profitable sales. Operating expense to sales, plus 90 basis points as we maintained high cost control despite increases in volume. The cost in absolute terms were up just by single digits of millions, but we enjoyed significant operational leverage. Moving on to group free cash flow. We enjoyed improved cash generation driven by increases in profit and working capital inflow. Operating cash at a group level was GBP 76 million, up GBP 15 million. Capital expenditure increased to GBP 31 million as we've invested in both stores and IT, although we've maintained tight control over spend. Exceptional items doubled to GBP 20 million, and these relate to restructuring and property costs, all of them are one-off in nature. And cash tax stayed low at GBP 2 million. Cash interest paid was broadly flat at GBP 7 million. And finally, working capital. Working capital was an inflow, driven by volume, thanks to negative payday stock and tight control, meaning that overall inflow of GBP 68 million in the half, which gives free cash flow of GBP 84 million. The strong free cash flow was used for pension payments and shareholder returns. Dividend -- the final dividend for last year that was paid in H1 was GBP 16 million. Purchase of our own shares. Of the GBP 50 million that we've announced, we did GBP 30 million of share buyback in the first half. We also purchased our own shares for our employee benefit trust, which was a further GBP 13 million. From a pension perspective, we made the final payment under the old arrangement before the actuarial review, which was a contribution of GBP 82 million. All of that was paid in the first half, and there will be no further pension payments in the second half. And overall, it gives a movement in net cash outflow of GBP 51 million and closing net cash at the end of the year -- sorry, at the end of the half of GBP 133 million. In terms of our balance sheet, our balance sheet continues to strengthen. We've now improved by over GBP 900 million over a 6-year period, and we have no gearing. We finished the period with net cash of GBP 133 million, and our pension deficit dropped to GBP 16 million. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. Our first priority is to maintain a prudent balance sheet. And as we've said previously, our year-end net cash will be at least GBP 100 million. We will then pay required pension contributions, and the contributions for the coming years will be just GBP 13 million. We will then invest to grow profits and cash, and capital expenditure for this year will be around GBP 90 million, and looking forward, will be less than GBP 100 million. We will pay and grow ordinary dividends. As we've talked in the past, we will have a progressive dividend policy. And today, we're declaring a 0.75p interim. And finally, any surplus cash flow will be available for share buybacks. And as I've said, of the GBP 50 million that commenced on the 4th of September, we've completed GBP 30 million in the first half, and we will resume the balance of that after our close period finishes on the 21st of January. So finally, current year outlook and guidance. We continue to expect our full year profit and cash flow to grow this year. And trading since the end of the half 1 period have been consistent with Board's expectations. And as usual, we'll provide a full update on peak trading on the 21st of January. We're providing some specific updated guidance. Total interest expense will be between GBP 60 million and GBP 65 million. Capital expenditure will be GBP 90 million compared to the GBP 95 million that we've said previously. And we are guiding to higher exceptional cash outflows that we expect to be around GBP 40 million on a full year basis compared to the previous guided GBP 30 million. And this relates to a delayed IT project where we've got dual running costs, and Alex will talk more about that in a moment. In terms of shareholder returns, our total cash dividend payment for this year will be GBP 25 million, which includes the GBP 16 million final payment for FY '25 and the GBP 8 million interim dividend I've just described. And finally, the GBP 50 million share buyback program underway, we will complete the balance that is outstanding. I'll now hand back to Alex.

Thanks, Bruce. And as usual, more to come in January on the strategy that's behind these results. But for now, I'll just say a few things. I mean, this is a clear strategy that we've been following consistently for some time that is evidently working. And it's a strategy that's based off having colleagues who know what they're doing and want to be working at Currys, who in turn make it easy for customers to shop and then get more of those customers to stick around us in stickier and more valuable customer relationships, Customers for Life in our language, which in turn drives higher profits and cash flow. So starting with colleagues, I mean, we do have more capable and committed colleagues. Our engagement is firmly established in the top 5% of companies worldwide. And we've just become the first U.K. retailer to break 4.0 in Glassdoor, which is good. And that's translating into a better customer experience, and we're making it easier for customers to shop, in particular, the omnichannel model that customers prefer that we have and competitors don't and that we're investing in. And we can talk in Q&A, if you like, about the investments in stores and better tools and processes like electronic shelf-edge labels, headsets, sales floor leaders, which will drive lower cost and higher conversion. And we are building stickier and more valuable customers, Customers for Life, particularly through the services and the solutions, which are so valuable to customers and to Currys. Services like installation, which is up in both the U.K. and the Nordics, in credit, in iD MVNO, and in the Nordics Customer Club, where customer numbers up 11% to over 10 million members now who account for more than half of Nordics revenue. And all of this is translating into higher profits and cash, as you've heard from Bruce, the good margin and cost discipline. But importantly, we're also now back into growth in areas like kitchens in the Nordics, new categories in the U.K. and B2B in both. Let's take a quick closer look at the U.K. and Ireland. And there is good underlying momentum here with healthy sales growth of 6% in a market that's been going backwards by 1.2%, which means share gains -- healthy share gains of 60 basis points and with margin and costs well controlled. Now I said we're growing where we said we'd grow and B2B is a good example of that. B2B, as you know, the SME market is an adjacent one to our core B2C market and grows our total accessible market by 60%. So it's good that we're growing by 16%, 1-6 percent in the first half in B2B, and we're nicely on track to double the size of this business within 3 years. And new categories, areas where we've historically been underweight, we're paying more attention to now. And so it's gratifying to see that grow by 35% in the first half, areas like health and beauty, up fully 69% within that. And growth in services and solutions, which are good for sales and margins and recurring revenues, which, by the way, are up 160 basis points now to over 30% of our sales. And services and solutions like credit, where we've had another strong half, adoption is up to over 23%, up 160 basis points. And this is good. It's good for customers, but it's also good for Currys. Credit customers spend more, they shop more often and they're twice the lifetime value. iD Mobile had another good half. Subscriber numbers up 21% to 2.4 million. We'll now handily beat our full year 2.5 million subscriber target. And iD has inspired the launch of our first Nordics MVNO in Finland. So good momentum. Still in the interest of balance, not everything is going our way. We've mostly but not entirely been able to offset the government cost headwinds that you heard about from Bruce. We've worked hard to do that, but we haven't entirely offset it. And equally, we haven't got everything right. I mean Bruce talked about a delayed IT program, which is disappointing. I mean we've had to pause the completion of the IT cloud migration into the new calendar year. It's a good project. It's well worth doing, migrating on-premises data centers to Microsoft Azure will in time yield a double-digit millions reduced cost -- total cost to operate, a mature annual cost benefit in the double-digit millions. It also future-proofs the business. We have 90% completed this migration, but it should by now have been 100%. We've had some teething troubles. And so we chose to pause it in October to protect the peak trading period. It's the right decision, but it does -- delaying completion to 2026, it does mean dual running costs for a time, which will show up in the exceptionals. One disappointment in a first half of many successes, but we do like to be self-critical, though it's hard to be too critical of our Nordics colleagues with their accelerating performance in a market that's coming back quite rapidly now. Their only blemish is a nudge down in H1 market share. But even with hindsight, we wouldn't do much differently. I mean we won't chase unprofitable sales, and we won't match some competitors in their aggressive promotions and store openings. We're not solving the market share, but we're solving for sustainable free cash flow, and we're happy with the healthy revenue growth that we've seen also in the targeted areas. I mean, B2B in the Nordics grew at 12%. It's the #1 group-wide growth opportunity. But also kitchens, we have an Epoq kitchens brand in the Nordics, which is growing nicely at 30%. So good revenue growth, good margin, cost discipline, good cash conversion, which means those profits up by 94% and free cash flow up by 65%. A strong first half with more to come from the Nordics, which is on a good trajectory with accelerating performance. So still, I mean, having said all of that, we do enjoy the benefits of scale. And we like being more than 2.5x the size of our nearest competitor. We get hard benefits from that. So we'll keep a close eye on market share trends, and we expect that to stabilize in the second half. So in summary, not a first half without blemish, opportunities to learn and keep improving, but also plenty more to come, good opportunities for more quality growth to keep profits and free cash flow heading in the right direction with good continued margin and cost discipline, good opportunities to build on the strong momentum we've seen in a successful first half and a strategy that's working, that's allowing better shareholder returns and that's seeing business on a good trajectory, one that's on us to keep going and we can see how. Finally, before I hand over to Q&A, I wasn't going to pass up the advantage of having all these affluent and time-poor consumers on this call. No doubt so busy that minds are only now turning to Christmas presents. But never fear, we've got you with some amazing techs and astounding deals, and I'm hurry before we come to our senses on some of the pricing. I mean, on 2 examples I'll pick out, happy to take any more on Q&A, the aptly named De'Longhi Magnifica, an excellent bean-to-cup coffee machine, mere GBP 365 with GBP 165 off, pay nothing for 12 months and get it exclusively at Currys. And while stocks last, I would tuck into the Shark CryoGlow face mask, only GBP 299 -- GBP 269, I should say. The -- in case anyone knows someone whose faces have blemishes, lines, wrinkles, tired eyes, well, the dual tech LED and cold tech will sort it out part of an electrification trend in health and beauty, which is bringing that category increasingly into our wheelhouse, showing 69% growth to show for it. So shop in-store or online, the U.K.'s #1 tech retailer this Christmas, a retailer whose performance continues to strengthen. We're pleased with today's promising numbers and trajectory, and we're determined to keep it going. With that, I will pass to you for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question this morning will be coming from Monique Pollard of Citi.

I also enjoyed the slide with the Christmas product. Maybe I can look into the LED mask. My first question was just on the U.K. budget and business rates. I'm just wondering what the net impact of that will be and whether that is actually a small tailwind for the business from April 2026. The second question I had was on iD Mobile. Basically trying to understand a bit more why you're gaining share in a declining market, do you think? And then the final question I had, coming back to the budget. UK&I B2B sales up 16%. Obviously, you said you want to double that business in 3 years, you're targeting SMEs, taking learnings from the Nordics. Just wondered if there was anything either in the macro environment or specifically in the budget that may make that plan of doubling that business in 3 years more challenging to achieve?

Let me cover the first one for you in terms of the budget. So obviously, this financial year based on the budget 12 months ago was a very significant impact with, as we've described, GBP 32 million of headwinds. The good news is that the headwinds are significantly smaller as we look ahead to next financial year. Taking each component in turn, first of all, in terms of the living wage, it's broadly where we anticipated it would be, very high single-digit millions impact year-on-year next year. The good news was that the changes that the Chancellor made to rates, both in terms of the plus and minus GBP 0.5 million ratable value, but also the changes to the rating values meant that we are expecting next year to see a small benefit year-on-year, let's call it, mid-digit single millions. So when you bring those 2 together, the overall net impact is single-digit mid-millions next year of headwinds. I hope that makes sense.

And let me take the next few questions, Monique. So on mobile, I mean, you rightly pointed out, we've got a growing share -- growing sales and share in a declining market. I think there's a couple of things behind that. I mean, first of all, we've had our historical troubles in this category as anyone who's been following us for long will know. But those are behind us now. And we've got this back into profitable growth. We've got this -- we're leaning much better on the Currys machine and the scale that we enjoy across electricals as well for effective cross-marketing. We've got good partnerships with the handset manufacturers to whom we matter a lot more than just in mobile, the likes of Apple and Samsung and Google. We have much broader partnerships with them. And so we're able to get preferential treatment. And we've got a good partnership with the network operators like Vodafone and Three. We also have got the power of iD behind our mobile growth. And as you know, this is an MVNO that's growing very nicely for us, 21% growth in subscribers to 2.4 million and will handily exceed, as I said, our 2.5 million subscriber target for the full year. And here, very simply, we've got very good terms that we've secured for longer, thanks to the CMA that allow us to price quite aggressively, but still very profitably in this market. And that's the principal enabler of this healthy growth in iD alongside customer experience improvements like the app, which [ has got -- had ] good take-up. So that's -- I mean that's the story in mobile. And we're in an area where we're underweight but catching up fast, and we see further headroom for growth even without any help from the market. Your last question was on SMEs. And no, we don't see an impact from the budget here on our plans. I mean, clearly, a better macro picture will be better all round. But our plans are independent of that. And that's because this is a market where we are significantly lower in our starting market share than in our core B2C market. If you think about our market share in B2C is 24% and our market in B2B is nearer 4%, you won't be far off. So there's a lot more headroom for growth. But we've got everything it takes to be successful in this market with our suppliers, the products, the services, the solutions, the supply chain and service operations, the channels and the colleagues. We built all of this. And we've got the 16% growth in the first half to show for it. So this is an adjacent market where we've got every right to win with much more fragmented competition. And we've built some momentum here. So there's a lot more to come in this space, irrespective of the policy and the macro environment.

Our next question will be coming from John Stevenson of Peel Hunt.

Just 2 questions from me. Just you mentioned in the strategy update, I don't know if you can talk a little bit more about the in-store service and operational improvements, particularly in light of higher staff costs. Is there still sort of tasks to take out of store while maintaining and driving service? And then secondly, I don't know if you can comment a little bit on the U.K. consumer. Obviously, the market gone backwards, you're taking share, but any sort of highlights, particularly as we're moving towards peak?

Yes. So let me start with in-store. And you're right to point out that we've had to work very hard to offset some, but not all of the headwinds we face. And that includes in-store. So store productivity has been significantly improved through initiatives like electronic shelf-edge labels, headsets and sales floor leaders. So what do I mean? So electronic shelf-edge labels rather than paper ticketing that we used to have with an innovation we started in the Nordics, it worked very well. So we've rolled it out to now all stores in the U.K. And that improves the customer experience. It allows for significantly more dynamic pricing and allows us to make many more price changes much more often than previously. And it, of course, reduces costs. So that's one good example. Another good example is on the sales floor leaders and the headsets. What this basically means is a customer coming into a Currys store will be greeted more quickly and allocated to the right colleague immediately. So it reduces wait time, it increases conversion and ATV because we've got the right colleague with the right customer and reduces downtime and therefore, colleague productivity. So we've worked really hard in the stores to achieve this. It's not just in the stores, though, but across the supply chain and the service operations, the right first-time initiative, for example, making sure that when we turn up to install a washing machine in a customer's home, we do so with the colleagues and the parts so we can do it there and then without incurring the cost of having to come back a second time. That continues to bear a lot of fruit. And we've had to take some tough decisions here at head office. We've reduced our central overheads by 10% during the course of the year as well as right across the business going harder on areas such as automation, offshoring and outsourcing. So there's a lot going on in short, John, on the operational improvement front. Second, you asked about the U.K. consumer. I mean it is muted, the confidence and spending both. And of course, we are in the box seat to see that serving as we do 80% of U.K. households. What we're seeing is consumers some concerns on employment, but more concern on a tax burden that's -- increasing tax burden from an already high base that's weighing down on real incomes. The best data on this will be the GFK Consumer Confidence tracker, as you'll know, and that's at historically low levels and has decreased further. It's decreased from minus 17% in October to minus 19% in November. And our own market, as you pointed out, the technology market declined by 1.2% in the first half. So a muted consumer environment for sure. I think there's a couple of things to say though. I mean, one, we're planning cautiously. So when Bruce talked about expected a healthy growth in profits and free cash flow this year, we're not assuming any improvement in the consumers' outlook. So if we're surprised, it will be on the upside. Second, importantly, we've built a business that's less dependent on the U.K. consumer. So over 40% of the group is now in the Nordics. It's going well, and it's an accelerating performance in a rapidly recovering market. And in the U.K., areas such as B2B and services and solutions are important in this context, too, because B2B operates on a different cycle from the U.K. consumer. And of course, recurring revenues that come from areas such as our services and solutions, credit and iD, necessarily are less susceptible to swings up and down in consumer confidence. And when we've set out to grow in areas where we're underweight, areas such as mobile, such as new categories as health and beauty, those -- we have more headroom to grow again without being dependent on the underlying consumer confidence. So we do believe, and we can see that we're building a more resilient Currys as well as a more successful one. And the evidence for that, we think, is in the results, I mean, healthy growth in sales, profit, free cash flow, shareholder returns. And in the U.K., we're growing sales at 6% in a market going backwards at minus 2% and building on 4 years of profit growth in the U.K. without any help from policy or from the market. So I hope that answers your question, John.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now go to Richard Chamberlain of RBC.

Three for me, please, if that's not too greedy. A couple on the Nordics then, just a follow up there. I see -- I think you've seen a little bit of share loss, albeit off a high level. I presume that's to the likes of the pure-play online retailers. But I wondered if you're seeing overall kind of rational market in terms of competitive behavior and the margin situation there. And then again, on the Nordic, what are you seeing in terms of big ticket sales? I think you mentioned strong kitchen sales. Has that been driven by any -- there's some good innovation coming through in that business. I wonder what you're seeing there. And then finally, on the stock intake. I think that's higher. To what extent is that just the sort of comps thing as a result of sort of disruption and so on last year? Are there some timing impacts there that are driving that higher stock intake?

Thanks, Richard. So I'll let Bruce take the stock question first, and I'll come back to the Nordics.

Yes. There are 2 factors that are causing stock to be up compared to last year. The first is, the impact of week 53 last year. So we had 53 weeks last year, which means this year, every week, it's bumped along. So our half year was much further into the peak cycle than it would have been 12 months ago. So that just naturally has increased our stock holding as our stock builds. The second is driven by volume. Obviously, we're showing healthy growth in both the U.K. and the Nordic business. And on that basis, to maintain availability, we've increased our overall levels of stock. So those would be 2 reasons.

On the share loss in the Nordics, Richard, you're right to observe, we did shave 60 basis points of market share off in the first half. I mean it was pretty evenly spread between categories. It was particularly concentrated in Finland, but we did see some in other markets as well. And I think -- I mean, the short version is even with the benefit of hindsight, and we -- as you imagine, we look at this pretty carefully, we wouldn't do very much differently. We're not going to chase unprofitable sales. We're not going to price unprofitably on [ base or ] promotions. We're not going to open stores without prospects of paying back. I mean we're solving for sustainable free cash flow here. And as long as we've got healthy growth in sales, profit and sustainable cash flow, then overall, we're reasonably happy. Now that said, we like the benefits of scale that we get in this business, and we like being more than 2.5x the size of our nearest Nordics competitor. We get hard benefits, not least with our suppliers from that. So we keep a very close eye on this, but I wouldn't say we're happy to shed any market share. But -- it's not what we're solving for. But in an ideal world, we have a [ row of cherries ] and we have that heading in the right direction, too. Now as it happens, we expect to see a stabilization of Nordics market share in the second half. So we'll come back to that a little later in the year. When you asked about the competitors, I mean, there is some aggression. And I mentioned some aggressive promotions and some store openings, but nothing irrational on the scale that we were seeing a few years ago. And that's the main point to make here. I mean this is a market that's coming back. It's coming back on the bottom line as well as on the top line. So it's part of a big driver of the accelerating performance that we're talking about today in the Nordics and our confidence in the trajectory and that we will keep going on it. You asked specifically about big ticket in the Nordics. We're quite pleased with Epoq and our kitchens business. It's a big kitchens business in the Nordics. If you're there, you'll see it everywhere and some really, really pleasing growth in kitchens, up 30% in the first half. I suppose one interesting thing about -- a couple of interesting things about kitchens. Firstly, they tend to pull along MDA sales. So major domestic appliances like washing machines and fridge freezers and ovens and the like, they're pulled along when you sell a kitchen and vice versa. And second, kitchens is quite a useful lead indicator of consumer confidence, which is rising in the Nordics. The markets are growing in the Nordics. And when it almost invariably either discretionary or house move-related kitchens sales are on the increase as healthily as they are, that's usually quite a good lead indicator for the future health of the consumer, one reason for our confidence in continuing the trajectory in the Nordics.

Next question will be coming from Nick Barker, calling from BNP Paribas.

Congratulations on the numbers. I was hoping you could just give me a little bit of color around looking into the full year. So with kind of approximately GBP 10 million beat in the first half and no change to full year guidance at this stage, that kind of implies flattish H2 profits year-on-year. Can you talk me through the puts and takes of this? That's my first question. And then my second question is about the new MVNO in Finland. It'd be great to hear a bit more about that and the thinking and rationale behind it.

I'll take the second part of your question first and then hand over to Bruce. It's very simple on the MVNO. I mean we've -- one of the benefits of having a group in a relatively homogenous category like technology is that we can try something in one country and be reasonably confident that if it works in Denmark, it will work in Ireland. And so it's proved many times in our business. MVNO is the latest example of this. We've got a very successful and fast-growing MVNO in the U.K. We're building something that's a valuable asset, by the way, as well as an important and profitable part of the customer experience, up to 2.4 million customers in the U.K., and we're keen to try it elsewhere. And Finland was the right place to start. It's a small market, so the stakes are lower. So it's a good place for trials. And it's also -- it's probably not the market in the Nordics where we have the strongest relationship with the mobile network operators. So for all of those reasons, it was a good place to try. I mean its relatively small scale. Subscribers are in the tens of thousands at the moment rather than anything bigger than that. But it's off to a good start, and we'll see where it goes from here.

Yes, as you probably expect me to say, we're not sharing any numbers in terms of guidance on a full year basis right now. We'll be back on the 21st of January. That session will cover all of peak trading, and we will guide you both profit and cash for the year.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now go to Wayne Brown of Panmure Liberum.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Great. So my question is the following. So Currys has come a long way in the last few years. And it was pretty obvious that there were some really things at the top of your agenda that needed sorting out a few years back. And I'm not going to go through the list but high debt pensions, et cetera. Obviously, the business is now in really good shape, much better shape. But if we had to take a step back and think about what's the 1 or 2 things that warrant most of your attention currently within the business?

Gosh. That's a big question, Wayne. So thank you for it. I mean there's a few things. I think the -- I mean, I won't repeat everything you've heard about the much better state that the business is in now and the strong foundations that we've built and the good momentum, as you know, that we're on with. I mean there's a few things. I think that there's a -- this is an opportunity-rich environment for us. And one of the things that we're very focused on is making sure that we've got profitable growth in the business now, and we want to keep that going. I say profitable because it's really important that we maintain our margin and cost discipline, but we've done that. And there are some very, very opportunity-rich areas in the business. B2B is the obvious example. Sorry to belabor the point, but it is really important. I mean this is our #1 growth opportunity in the Nordics and in the U.K., grew it by 12% in the Nordics, 16% in the U.K., but so much more to go. If we've got 4% market share in an area where we have just as much right to win as we do in the area where we have 24% market share, that gives you a sense of the kind of headroom -- long-term headroom that we're thinking of. And it's not just the fact that we've got everything it takes to be successful ourselves, it's also the case that it's a much less competitive market where the competition is much more fragmented. So this is an area of real opportunity for us, which is why we're putting so much emphasis behind it. And that's one area of business. But as you know, it's not the only growth area where you might say belatedly, but in any case, we are catching up in areas where we've historically allowed ourselves to become underweight, whether it's new categories like gaming or health and beauty or accessories. We are -- that's a catch-up game. But then there's new technology that's emerging and AI, rather surprised we've got to this stage of the call without it being mentioned, but here it is. AI computing is a trend that's really biting. And we saw that in the 12% growth in AI computing in the first half. And it's an area that we are making our own. We need to maintain it. We're not getting complacent, but 70% plus market share in AI PCs, being the #1 partner for the likes of Microsoft and Google testify to that. So those are all the growth areas that we're focused on. That's kind of one way to answer your question. The second thing that we're really focused on is building this business out into a true solutions provider. So much for the buzzword, but what does that actually mean? Well, we don't want to be sitting just between a powerful supplier and an occasionally flighty customer shifting a box and just selling a product. Clearly, that's the heart of what we do for customers is to sell products. But it's not the only thing that we want to do. And increasingly, we've been able to help the customer not just periodically with a product sale, but all the time, through services and solutions right the way through the life of that product, solutions that allow them to afford the products in the first place with areas like credit to get started with it, in installation to give it longer life through repair and to get the most out of it through various subscriptions. And that's not just nice for the customer that we're helping them and helping them in areas where they need help, it's also very good for us because it's an area of growth, it's high-margin growth, and it's also recurring revenues that now up to 30% of our sales that are being very good for Currys as well as being very good for the customer. So those are 2 areas I would pick out, Wayne, as we need to keep this profitable growth going, and we believe we can because there's a lot of opportunity there. And we need to build -- continue the markets that we're on, again, with a lot more headroom to go on building out the growing high-margin recurring revenue-rich services and solutions that we are uniquely well placed to provide to customers. None of our competitors can do what we can do here as well as customers value it and are willing to pay for it.

We have another question just came in now. It's coming from Kate Calvert of Investec.

Just a quick question on future cost-saving opportunities in the U.K. You've obviously talked this morning about investing in the likes of electronics, shelf pricing, use of headsets, et cetera. And you mentioned that when you finish off this migration, it will give you some nice sort of cost saving benefits. Where is next really that you need to go to in terms of continuing to improve the efficiency of the business?

Well, I think you've used the word in your question, Kate. It is all around efficiency. So over the course of the last 4 or 5 years, I think most of the heavy lifting that we had in terms of fundamental fixes and maybe taking huge amounts of waste out of our organization have been dealt with. So we're now looking at how do we fine-tune the business and get more effective from a process perspective, whether that be within our stores, whether it be on our online business, within our supply chain and service operation or indeed in our center and our IT costs. So a lot of our focus right now is looking at process, looking at end-to-end process which obviously is a bit of a longer term, but it's both about refining our cost base, but also refining the way that we work so we can be more effective.

As we have no further questions, Alex, I'd like to turn the call back over to you.

Yes. Thank you. And thank you very much for your attention this morning. I mean we are pretty pleased with the trajectory of the business. We're pleased with these strong results. We're pleased with -- on every level with sales, profit and free cash flow and shareholder returns, all heading in the right direction of a base of engaged colleagues and happy customers. More than that, we can see how to continue doing it. Some help from the policy and the market -- policy and market environment might be nice, but we don't need it. We don't need it to keep -- to show the healthy growth in profits and free cash flow for this year that we've talked to. I will leave you not just with a happy Christmas, but with an encouragement to the -- as I say, to the cash-rich and time poor on this call to get yourself to a Currys store or online immediately to take advantage of some of these absurdly generous deals that we have on offer at the moment and will provide fantastic Christmas gifts for your loved ones. So happy Christmas, everyone, and look forward to picking it up with you in the new year.

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's conference. Thank you for your attendance. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.