Saga plc (SAGA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Roger De Haan, the company's chairman, and this is our first AGM in person since 2019, and the first time we've offered our shareholders the chance to view the proceedings online or attend in person. I'd like to extend a warm welcome and thank you for joining our Annual General Meeting today. As it's now 11:00, and we have a quorum, I declare the meeting open. First, I'd like to introduce the Board and our company secretary. From your left to right, Julie Hopes is one of our non-executive directors and also Chair of our insurance broking company, Saga Services. Julie also chairs our Risk Committee. Gareth Hoskin, also a Non-Executive Director and Chair of Acromas Insurance Company, Saga's underwriting company. Gareth also chairs our Audit Committee. Orna Ni-Chionna is our Senior Independent Director and Chair of our Nomination Committee. Euan Sutherland is our Group Chief Executive Officer. Vicki Haynes, our group Company Secretary. Eva Eisenschimmel is our Non-Executive Director, Chair of Remuneration Committee and also our representative on the Board for colleagues. And finally, James Quin, our group Chief Finance Officer. The directors and senior members of staff will all be available after the AGM for more informal discussions. I look forward to having a longer chat with you than today. I have tried to meet as many of you before the meeting as possible, but I look forward to talking to you afterwards. The first 5 months of the year have been challenging, but we've made good progress and are on track to make an underlying profit this financial year. I and the Board are confident that our strategy will create long-term growth and value for our stakeholders. Saga has, under Euan Sutherland's leadership, refocused the business and laid the foundations required for the strategy. During the next 5 years, we will broaden the range of products and services we offer our customers, assisted by a very significant increase in the contact we have with them online. We'll do this by offering content that will be designed to foster regular and increasing engagement with them. In September, we'll welcome 2 new non-executive Board Directors, Sir Peter Bazalgette and Gemma Godfrey. Between them, they bring valuable and relevant new skills to Saga's leadership and we all look forward to working with them. Orna, our current Senior Independent Director, who's served on the Board for 8 years since May 2014, will step down in September. Her roles as Senior Independent Non-executive Director and Chair of the Nomination Committee will move to Sir Peter. On behalf of the Board, I'd like to thank Orna for her contribution to Saga over the past 8 years. Well done. I'd like to move on now to the formal business of the meeting. Voting this year will be conducted by a poll. How this works and how you'll get to vote will be explained during the formal part of the meeting. For those of you viewing our meeting online, you can now start submitting questions using the online meeting platform, and we'll address these later in the proceedings. To do so, simply click on the Questions tab, type your questions into the box and click Send Your Question. Please note that if we receive questions around a similar topic, we'll group them and provide an answer which covers them in the aggregate. I'll now hand over to Euan so he can provide an update on current trading. After Euan's comments, we'll move on to the formal part of the AGM. So Euan, over to you.

Thank you very much, Chairman. Good morning, everybody, and I'm very pleased to be talking to you today at my third AGM of the company and first in person. It's good to see some of our shareholders here and to offer the opportunity for shareholders to also view online. In the last full financial year, Saga continued to make good operational and strategic progress, even against the backdrop of the pandemic. We were pleased that we were able to come through the pandemic with our aim of emerging stronger than we went in. What I want to focus on now is the progress we've made since the year-end. In March, as part of our full year results, we set out an evolution of our strategy aimed at converting the foundations laid over the past 2 years into sustainable growth for all of our stakeholders, including you, our investors. Five months into the new financial year, I'm pleased to report that Saga has made further progress, and we are on track to return to an underlying profit this year despite navigating what continues to be a challenging external environment. To support us in the execution of our growth plan and adding to the new non-exec directors that Roger has already mentioned this morning, we've also announced the addition of 3 new members of the executive team to drive our personal finance, our content, and our data strategies. Jerry Toher joins as CEO of Saga Personal Finance; and Aaron Asadi, as CEO of Saga Media, both on the 1st of September. Finally, we've appointed a new Chief Data Officer, who will be focused on enhancing the way we use our customer insight, and we will share further details on this once we're able to. I'm very excited to welcome all 3 to the team and look forward to working with them as we shape the saga of the future. I'm confident that our strategy, our people and our product offering will create long-term growth and value for all stakeholders. We released our trading statement to the market this morning which is available online, and there are printed copies available for you here today if you've not had the chance to read it. I'll now just take a few minutes to talk through some of the highlights from that statement. As we indicated in March and following the recent regulatory changes, the insurance market has been turbulent in the first part of the year. Cost of claims continues to rise, but due to the intense competition in the market, we believe these costs are not being fully reflected in the prices being charged by many insurers. In the context of this environment, we've maintained discipline, which has had some impact on our competitive positioning. In the 5 months to the 30th of June, our total policy sales across all products was 2% lower than the prior year, with motor and home policies 9% behind due to a decline in new business. Customer retention across the home and motor business remains strong at 83% and in line with the prior year. Motor and Home margins per policy were also broadly in line with the prior year at GBP 73. Looking ahead, the Retail Broking business is expected to return to Motor and Home policy growth in 2023, '24, albeit with a lower average margin per policy, which we estimate to be around GBP 60. Turning our attention now to the 2 travel businesses. In Ocean Cruise, for the first half of the year, we expect a load factor of 67% and per diem of GBP 318. As referenced in March, we continue to see some impact from the pandemic on a small number of departures, while the war in Ukraine impacted customer demand for Baltic and Black Sea Cruises. Now that, that business has begun to return to more normal operating conditions, load factors over the summer months are exceptionally strong, and we're still expecting a load factor of 75% for the full year. Looking ahead to Ocean Cruise for next year, we have had an incredible launch to the 2023, 2024 season, which has exceeded our expectations. We already have a booked load factor of 34% and a per diem of GBP 312, both of which are well ahead of where we'd normally expect to be at this time of year. Bookings in our holiday business continue to be impacted by COVID-19 in the first half, as well as other external factors. We are, however, starting to see customer cancellations return to normal levels, and we are confident in a strong return to growth for our holiday business as we go into the end of 2022 and 2023. When we look at next financial year, holiday bookings are showing encouraging signs with a higher level of sales than we saw in the equivalent periods before the pandemic. Turning our attention to the balance sheet. Our positioning is strong with significant available cash and no debt maturities until 2024, at which point we expect to repay the GBP 150 million of available cash. In Personal Finance, where our ambition is to attract new customers and deepen our existing relationships, we are pleased with the recent launch of our new equity release product. Customer leads are up 30% and ahead of the prior year and loans 29% ahead of the prior year. We believe equity release remains a significant opportunity for Saga and a key part of our growth plan moving forward. In March, we set out 2 objectives to grow our database and to increase the frequency of interaction with our customers. In the past year, our database has undergone radical transformation, resulting in higher quality, more up to date and richer data about many of our customers, as well as a dramatic increase in consent for our customers to contact them with new products, services and offers. Consent volumes for the first 5 months of the year are more than 80% higher than the whole of 2021, 2022, and we expect this to increase. Frequency of interaction is also supported by the launch of our new Saga Weekly newsletter, which allows us to interact with our customers in a more frequent way. Already around 500,000 customers per week benefit from the new newsletter, which leverages our existing Saga Magazine and will substantially extend our reach to customers. And finally, before I hand back to Roger, I'd just like to take a moment to acknowledge the huge efforts of all of my Saga colleagues and thank them for all of their hard work through this tough time. I would also like to thank all of you for your ongoing support. Thank you, and I'll hand back to the chairman.

Thank you, Euan. Now we move to the formal part of the meeting. The resolutions were listed and explained in the notice of meeting, and I don't propose to summarize them again. As the notice was published on our corporate website and was sent or made available to shareholders in accordance with their instructions, I would take this as read unless anyone objects. We will now consider any questions that you may have about the annual report in general or any of the resolutions in particular.

We received a number of questions in advance of the meeting, which we've responded to. We'll start by answering any questions from shareholders attending here at Enbrook. While we're doing this, could I ask shareholders viewing online to send any other questions electronically, and we'll do our best to answer them. We've encouraged those of you wishing to put a question to the meeting to preregister them in order to deal with them as effectively as we can. I will take registered questions first. Before asking your question, please give your name and state whether you are a shareholder, proxy or corporate representative. If you are a proxy or corporate representative, please state your name and the name of the shareholder you are representing. The inquiries desk will be open after the meeting for any queries you may have relating to your personal shareholding. Can we have the first question?

I have initially a sad story to tell. I've been a shareholder, with my wife, in Saga for 4 or 5 years. We've always thoroughly enjoyed the Shareholders' Annual Meeting and find it a very informative experience. Obviously, we've all gone through a very difficult time in the last 2 or 3 years. So last November, December, I think it was, I said to Barbara, before we book our summer holiday for 2022, let's try and find out when the Saga shareholders' annual meeting is, usually in June, we'll work our summer holiday around that. So I started with my first telephone call to Saga in November 2021, trying to discover the date of the annual meeting in 2022. If I tell you Mr. Chairman, Barbara will confirm, I made 14 telephone calls to different departments of Saga trying to find out and nobody had a clue. Everyone was very keen to sell me either car insurance or home insurance or a cruise. And when I asked to talk to the company secretary, "I don't have a secretary, I work from home." I want to talk to Ms. Haynes, Vicki Haynes. "Who's she?" Not a clue. I really had the impression, and with 3 telephone numbers I found, BT numbers, one ended in 111, that number was very keen to sell me insurance, or cruise. There was a second telephone number, BT number, on Mr. Sutherland's letter to all shareholders 18 months ago. I rang that number, and would you believe, I got hold of Hammerson Property Company. Three times I rang that number, three times I got hold of Hammerson. What on earth is going on. So it was really in desperation, come April, May, Barbara said, we're going on a holiday come what may, and keep our fingers crossed so I will get in here. The other thing I would comment on, talking to most of the staff who deal with insurance, I gather most are still working from home. Now that may suit them very well, but I find as a customer that when I talk to most of these people working from home, they haven't got a clue what was going on. If I talked to other departments or senior people, not an idea at all too. So I'm just pointing out that I'm afraid working from home does have some quite serious -- from customers' point of view, some quite serious problems. However, it might suit the people involved. That's my first observation.

Thank you. That's -- can I deal with the difficulty you had in finding out about the date of the meeting. Let's deal with that first. Vicki, can I...

Yes, of course. Thank you, Roger. And thank you for your question. And sorry that you found it so difficult to get hold of me personally. That should not have happened and I apologize for that. The AGM date is set -- clearly, we have a Board of Directors that we need to have at the meeting. So we set the date in accordance with our corporate calendar to coincide with our results announcements, our trading updates, and also to ensure that all directors can attend. So November is slightly too early, if I'm honest, to set that date. But as soon as we are aware, we do publish it on our website. In future, I will personally take your contact details and will make sure that we notify you. And I'll also let you have my details. And once again, that should not have happened and we'll rectify that situation. We'll make sure everybody has my personal phone number, so that you can get a hold of us.

Can I just add a couple of things, Roger, just to that. And we talked previously. I think there's some learnings for us here out of a post-pandemic world where we are in hybrid working conditions, where trying to attract the best colleagues is a pretty difficult thing to do for every business in the U.K. and probably across the world. We will get better at publishing on our corporate websites and other websites the correct telephone numbers for all of our customers and shareholders to use. And I think there's some fairly quick wins that we can just do to make that easier. We can also commit to making the corporate website updates as frequent as possible. And your point about our colleagues connecting, we spend a lot of time trying to enable all colleagues, across a wide variety of product areas, to connect, even if they're not in the office. And we now use this space and other spaces in other offices to bring colleagues in to establish that sense of corporate DNA and team working. So there are some good lessons for us in that. So thank you for raising the point.

Thank you for the helpful answers. But one specific question. In Mr. Sutherland's resume 18 months ago, with the restructuring, he explained that no dividend would be payable until the gearing, I think that reduced from 3.5x. Now this year, in this year's annual report in accounts on Page 51, Mr. Quin has very helpfully set out a schedule of the repayments of this year and the next 2 or 3 years, and I noticed the 3.5 reduces to below 3.5 next July 2023. So my question is, would I be correct in saying that the Board is then free in a position to consider -- I repeat, consider paying a dividend from July 2023, because the gearing has reduced below the magic figure.

James -- I've got something to say. But James, can you talk about the information in the report.

Yes. So thank you for your question. And I do have Page 51 open in front of me. And you've actually spotted something that we should have had an asterisk in our accounts. So there's a slight piece missing under the table you are looking at, because what we're talking there is the ratio of our net debt to our EBITDA, which is earnings before interest, tax and depreciation. And there, you're absolutely right that the covenant in our credit facility, as you say, 3.75x reducing to 3x. What I think we probably need to highlight a bit more clearly is that, that net debt-to-EBITDA excludes the Cruise business. And most of the debt that we have on our balance sheet does relate to the Cruise business. So in a sense, what that ratio is, it should always be a much lower ratio than our total ratio of debt-to-EBITDA. So what I think I guess the point I would say here is that what we have in here is what the limits are on our credit facility. Those limits are different probably to the ones we would use to judge dividend. And you're absolutely right on the dividends. That would be based on total net debt to total EBITDA. And once that gets down to 3.5x or lower, that's the point at which we would be considering potentially paying dividends again. I would say that's probably still some way off. And so we said before, the earliest time that would be likely would be in 2024. And I think that's probably still something that we're working towards, but it could be between 2024 and 2025 based on our latest numbers.

One last final question, Mr. Chairman. Luckily, my wife and I have been to the shareholders' meeting before, so when we drove into this morning, my wife said, "stop, stop, stop, you're passing the Saga building." And I hate to say so, but the turning now looks very faded. And can I suggest perhaps a coat of paint might be appropriate just to spruce up the public image of Saga to the local public.

Thank you. Thank you for your question. We'll certainly get -- let's get the painter out and see what we can do. Does anybody have any other questions?

Another shareholder. Now with you selling off all your other sites and the monitoring of all the people on the phone, are you finding many mistakes? And I would hope that you're still going to have 1 hub anyway, which would probably be this place. But I mean you must have made quite a bit of money on getting rid of all those big sites all around the towns of the South Coast. And that's it, thank you.

If I pick that up, I think, so we are now moving into a new working format, a hybrid working format where most of our colleagues will spend some time working from home and some time working from hubs. There are 2 main hubs. The biggest one is this building here, and most colleagues access this. We typically have 200 or so or more colleagues every day in this building. And then we have a hub in London, a much smaller hub up there too. We obviously monitor productivity and any mistakes that would happen with any of our products. We are not seeing any increase in that. In fact, we've seen improvements in both productivity and accuracy across all of our businesses. It is a big switch. And I know it is difficult to get our heads around having all of us, probably in our working lives, always come to an office, 9 to 5, or longer, and then moved into the pandemic, where all of us who were working were kind of at home 100% of our time. The job market out there for the best people in the U.K. is incredibly competitive. And therefore, we do have to present our colleagues with hybrid options because they demand that and the best colleagues demand that now. But we demand the best of them, too, to drive exceptional outcomes for customers. We are in the process of rationalizing our buildings. We still have some of our buildings. We had 3 buildings in Folkestone, and even at the pre-pandemic levels, we weren't filling them. So it was efficient for us to rationalize down to 1 building and then to get the most efficiency out of that. Some buildings have gone already. There was a building in Reigate, which was highly in demand, sold within 10 days. I think it went to an Amazon warehouse because that's a huge growth market. So it was a commercially sensible set of decisions to make. Some of our other buildings we had on lease and rent agreements, so therefore, there wasn't a capital pay back to the organization. But that's been flowed through in, in the last couple of years' accounts. And obviously, the last couple of years were incredibly stressed as we were able to navigate the pandemic without revenues coming into the top of the P&L.

Are there any more questions?

I know that COVID obviously had an effect on your business. What about Brexit?

Other than probably the stresses that we're all seeing on the labor market, and there is a link back into Brexit labor market shortages, that's probably the most common and the clearest impact that we can see. Because there's been so many impacts, so many global impacts, it's now very difficult for us to distill out what was Brexit, what was the inflationary impacts, what's been Ukraine, what's the cost of living, what's COVID? I mean it's an extraordinary period of time to run a business and to navigate through, which is why I wanted to thank our colleagues publicly today because they have been so resilient and so positive in navigating all of that. But no, it's not -- I mean, Brexit now seems a long time ago, having gone through lots of the shocks that we're still going through today, but it is a tricky place to do business right now. But no, it's not been the biggest impact that we've had.

There's a question here.

I'm [ Maureen Jared ], shareholder. I wondered what provision you've got for people like ourselves who are not online, because I've asked this before and everybody is going to be looking into it, but we just miss out on quite a bit. I know some of it is our fault for not being online, but it's not something we choose to do.

Yes, I'll pick that up. So more and more, we are going online because it's the most efficient and the quickest way to get our products and services to all customers. However, we always want to make provision for all customers to be able to see all products and services. So we are committed to continuing to do that, because we want you to have the choice. And we recognize that some people can't or don't want to go online, and we don't want to exclude you at all from anything. If there's any specific examples of where we haven't serviced your needs, then we should pick that up afterwards. But the world is going online, and we do have to keep moving in that direction, but we're very conscious that not everybody wants to go at that pace. There's no doubt we have significant numbers of customers who prefer to receive their holiday brochure in a printed form and so on. And we understand that and we will continue to serve those customers in that way.

I think every month this document comes with the post.

Perhaps we should reduce the number of mailings we're sending you then. Yes, we should do it.

Can you tell me, please, what's happening now about the old Saga building where the bus station is? Is it still yours? And is it going to be made into flats? That's what I've heard.

So it is still ours. We still own it, and we are still very keen to develop that site. We're working with the council, and they are very keen to develop the whole area in their bid to level up Folkestone. So I can't confirm what it's going to be, but we're very interested in maintaining and building the center of Folkestone. Folkestone has always been Saga's home and we've reconfirmed that with the council. And so we're very interested in us being an active part of the town center. So while I can't tell you the exact plans, hopefully, you won't have to wait too long for us to be able to confirm that.

We keep seeing people coming on the grounds here, measuring up. Can you confirm that this is all going to close and you're going to leave -- move, sorry, move out [indiscernible].

No. But I think there's -- I mean, there's public rights of way and access, which are embedded into the ground here. Whatever happens to this building, we need to keep moving forward with how we use the building. As you've seen this floor inside the building, -- actually, every floor in this building, if you were to take a tour, has changed pre-pandemic to post pandemic because we're using it for different things. This remains our hub and our biggest hub, where all our colleagues come. But we're always looking at how to make the area, the buildings better. So if you've seen people kind of measuring up, there's lots of different plans on how we improve things, how we attract more of our colleagues back into the building more regularly. So we're always looking at plans to do that.

And I would like to know -- I don't know why I have to have a great big thick book. And I can't make when you have the shareholders' meetings and all the -- I can understand you sending out and it's necessary to send out all the information on the business. But for me -- I don't know about anybody else, but it's a complete waste of time. And I wondered whether there'd be any chance to say, no, I don't want to receive the set of accounts. Just the basic letter. Now I always read that, but the rest of it is an extraordinary amount of work. But, for me to go through, and I don't know about anybody else, it's just a waste of paper, to be honest with you. I'd like to attend the meeting and I like to listen to what's going on, but that huge great book coming through the accounts book or whatever you like to call it, is terrible waste of time for someone like me?

So, I couldn't agree more, to be honest. I think it's one of those things that -- and we were actively talking about it. You can opt out of receiving it, I think, Vicki? And so we can set you up that way. I think as we move to a more digital world, if we come back to that, and I think if you think about the planet and the environment, sending this out to hundreds of thousands of people just doesn't feel like the right way forward. I think there's lots of corporate governance rules, which is not set by Saga, but it's set by kind of higher powers that are insisting on us doing these things, but I think we need to make some more pioneering moves to make this easier for people who don't want to.

I understand some people need that sort of thing. I understand people need it, but for somebody like me, it really isn't necessary, just the basic sort of letter that usually comes with it and information, and then I come here to hear the AGM. So it would be nice to have somewhere to say, no, I don't want it.

Absolutely. As Euan said, we can make a note, I'll speak to you afterwards, because we can set that up for you. And indeed, we do reach out to our shareholders. We did it last year where we sent a letter out that says, if you don't respond to this letter within 28 days, we will automatically assume that you do not wish to receive a paper copy. So we are trying, as Euan said, to do our bit for the environment, but very happy to pick up with you afterwards to make sure that happens for you.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Are there any more questions?

Yes. Antonio Giovanni, shareholder. I'd just like to let you know the trouble I had to actually get in touch with Equiniti. I couldn't get into the website. I phoned them up. I was on the phone for about half an hour and they tried to sort it out. And then I went back in and I could get to the site where you've got the proxy thing, but I couldn't get into that. So I had to phone them back up again. And in the end, they had to send me the proxy to home, which I filled in and sent back to them. And this is the first time I've actually been able to get into the site since you moved to Equiniti.

So what I'd suggest is that if I could pick that up with you afterwards, we do have Equiniti here today. So I think if we could talk, I'd like to understand more fully the difficulties you've had. I'm so sorry that you've had those difficulties, and we will sort it out for you. But if that's okay, I'll get your feedback afterwards.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have some questions online. How are we going to deal with that?

So Emily Roalfe, our Head of Investor Relations, is here and she will read the questions out for us. Thanks, Emily.

Emily.

Thank you, Chairman. The next question is from [ William Telling ], who asked the following. Saga has a long history of overestimating the power of its brand in new markets. Management suggested they would focus on the core product offering both upon joining and reiterated this at the preliminary results. Now they suggest a focus on new product offerings over the next few years. Why is the brand powerful enough to do this today when it hasn't been in the past?

Should I take that up? So I think it's a great question, and there has been a history of Saga in the last 20 years or so not maximizing some of the opportunities of new markets that it's gone into. Where we're taking the next generation of Saga is into markets where we already have some knowledge. So we're looking to expand into media, and we already have the most successful monthly magazine in the U.K. today. We've got evidence of taking that into a more frequent, highly engaged weekly magazine, which has doubled the reach of that, and we aim to get that to over 1 million people before the end of this year. So we've got high degrees of confidence in the media plan, and then in the investment in the new team that, that will deliver substantial payback for investors. And in our Personal Finance business, I guess, is the other area where we're looking to expand significantly. Again, we have a track record of success there. So we have a successful savings products, equity release products. The update today said that equity release was up 30% year-on-year. So we're taking, we hope, some sensible actions with lots of experience and adding people who are experts in those markets, to further drive profitable growth there. So I think we are confident in the approach that we're taking.

[ William Telling ] also asks, the travel operations, specifically non-cruise, have historically been low margin and the lowest quality section of Saga's core business. Can we explain why we persist with this business? In particular, what is the ambition for profit and margin levels within non-cruise travel business over the next 5 years?

I'll pick that up. So I think, yes, those facts have been true in the past. I think to be fair, since Roger led back in 2004, there has not been a focus on Saga Holidays delivering the brand promise that was established for years and years prior to that point. We are reestablishing that and aligning the Holidays business to the cruise offer. So every Saga Holiday will have the service wrapper that you get around the cruise product, too. Now we have combined Titan and Saga Holidays to drive stronger margins on our touring business and we have moved our Holidays business -- or we are moving our Holidays business much more digital to be able to access lower cost to serve, better products across the globe, better prices, which result in better margins So in short, we are taking our Holidays business into the same quality bracket as our cruise offer, and our margins will improve over the next 5 years or so. We have, on the corporate website, today, published a video with me talking through all of the strategy. And in that, we talk about an ambition to get to 300,000 traveling passengers every year, which is significantly ahead of where we were at our peak pre-pandemic. So we've got some really exciting plans in Holidays. John is here, the CEO, at the back, if you want to ask him questions later on, too. But we're really excited about our new Holidays offer, which largely launches in September this year.

Another question from [ William Telling ]. Management has suggested that insurance will settle at a lower profit with a margin of GBP 60 per policy in '23, '24. How do they expect PBT for the underwriting business to be affected over '23, '24, and more broadly 5 years from now, considering both lower margin and a lower number of policies? Do they anticipate underwriting PBT to be higher in '24, '25 than it has been on average over the last 3 to 4 years. Likewise, what is the expectation for the broking business over the same period?

Yes. So underwriting profitability won't be affected by the broking margin move. In terms of outlook for broking, we have given the GBP 60 per policy guidance today on Home and Motor. That will reduce our profitability within broking for the following year, but we're not giving guidance beyond that. We also have some mitigating actions in rebuilding our travel insurance, private medical insurance and pet insurance, as well as lots of work that Steve and the team are doing around cost efficiencies and customer relationship marketing, which should improve our profitability and offset some of the downside in the lower margin. But hopefully that helps give some clarity on that.

The next question is from Anthony Roger, who asks, is there a scheme whereby Saga shareholders can receive a discount on Saga cruises and holidays. If not, are there plans to introduce this in line with some other cruise lines?

We don't have a specific discount policy for shareholders at the moment. It's something that we should take away and we should look at. Actually, I know it's something that was there in the past, I think, Roger, that you ran. But I think it's a good idea to take that away and evaluate it.

Melvin Scofield doesn't have a question as such, but has some observations that he shared. He references that the share price continues to decline and quotes some of the statistics around this. He also observes that we referenced delivering long-term value for shareholders by returning the business to sustainable growth, but sees little evidence of this. Finally, he states that he believes the strategy is failing and has some reservations around the Board.

I don't agree with him. But obviously, the company has been -- the company has a sound strategy, the environment has been the challenge. The world pandemic has prevented people cruising and traveling. But we are slowly coming out of the pandemic and we're beginning to treat COVID as a bit like the flu now and we're beginning to live with it. And we can see from our forward bookings for the next year that people are eager to travel and they are booking in higher numbers than they have with us in the past. So I think we have a sound strategy, and I think as far as travel is concerned, the prospects are very good. I have great faith in the 5-year strategy, and we've got an excellent executive team now to deliver that strategy. As we've said today, we've also strengthened the Board to bring to the Board some additional skills that we think we will need to help us guide the company over the next 4, 5 years. So I think we're in a very good position.

I would just add to that, even though it wasn't technically a question, just a series of observations, is that the share price is highly frustrating right now. There's a huge amount of effort by all of the colleagues in Saga to improve our service to our customers. We're not the only company. Every other company listed pretty much on the stock exchange has been hit by the continuing world pressures. I'm not a financial adviser, so I can't advise you on your shareholding, but this is entirely the wrong time to sell shares. We have announced the Saga Transformation Plan today, which has been voted through, which means that every single colleague in the business will share in the success of our business above a share price of GBP 6. And so if you can take that as a guide to where we believe the minimum share price for this business should be, then hopefully, that will give you a better share price in the next 5 years. We're absolutely committed to being able to deliver that. But we're also very cognizant of the fact that we're not in control of world events. That's slightly above my pay grade and the guys sitting behind you. But we are going to navigate everything as best we can to deliver sustainable shareholder value for you.

Thank you. There have been no further questions submitted online.

Thank you, all. I'll now move on with the agenda of the meeting and hand over to our group company secretary, Vicki Haynes, to explain the procedure for conducting the poll.

Thank you, Roger. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As Roger said, a poll will be conducted on each of the resolutions put to the meeting, and the company's registrars, Equiniti, are here today to act as scrutineers. Each resolution is set out in full in the notice of the meeting, which you would have received in the post, electronically, or by being directed to the copy that's available on our website. Resolutions 1 to 15 are proposed as ordinary resolutions and require a simple majority to be passed. Resolutions 16 to 19 are proposed as special resolutions, which require a majority of 75% to vote in favor in order for the resolution to be passed. You will have been given a poll card at registration, which shareholders and proxies for shareholders should complete. In the case of corporate shareholders, the poll card should be completed by their authorized representatives present at the meeting or by their proxy. Please complete the card in block capitals and sign it. Our registrars are here. As I mentioned, they are on hand to help, and should you require any assistance, please do let us know. You have 3 options for each resolution. You can vote for, against, or you may withhold your vote. A vote withheld is not a vote in law and will not be counted in the calculation of the proportion of the votes for or against the resolution. Those shareholders who have already lodged a proxy or voted online do not need to complete another poll card here today unless you wish to change your vote. In a moment, a summary of each resolution will be shown on the screen behind me, so you may wish to complete your poll card as I take you through these, or you can complete it afterwards. I'll now summarize each of the resolutions. The first resolution is to receive the annual report and accounts for the year ended 31st of January 2022. The next resolution is to seek approval of the directors' remuneration report as set out in the annual report and accounts. Resolutions 3 and 4 seek approval for the proposed remuneration policy and the rules of the proposed Saga Transformation Plan that Euan just mentioned. Resolutions 5 to 11 concern the reelection of our directors, each of whom retire in accordance with the recommendations of the U.K. Corporate Governance Code and, being eligible, are offering themselves for election at this Annual General Meeting. The Board recommends that KPMG are reappointed as our auditors. Resolution 12 proposes that KPMG be reappointed as auditor, and Resolution 13 deals with their remuneration. The purpose of Resolution 14 is to authorize the company and/or its subsidiaries to make limited political donations or incur limited political expenditure. It is not proposed or intended to alter the company's policy of not making political donations within the normal meaning of such expressions. We now come on to Resolution 15, which relates to the authority to issue shares. Before directors can issue shares, they must first be authorized by you as our shareholders to do so. As explained in the notice of the meeting, the directors have no current intention of exercising this authority. You will find a more detailed explanation in the notice. The following resolutions are proposed as special resolutions. So as I mentioned, they require a 75% majority to be passed. Resolution 16 will give the directors authority to allot shares for cash without first offering them to existing shareholders on an unrestricted basis in proportion to their existing holding of shares in keeping with market, practice, and institutional guidelines. The number of shares to which this proposed authority relates is limited to 5% of the current issued share capital, and this authority will expire at next year's Annual General Meeting or on the 31st of July 2023, whichever is earlier. Again, a more detailed explanation is set out in our notice. Resolution 17 will give the directors authority to allot an additional 5% of shares for cash without first offering them to existing shareholders in proportion. This authority will only ever be used in relation to an acquisition or a capital investment. Again, the authority will expire at next year's AGM or on the 31st of July next year, whichever is earlier. The purpose of Resolution 18 is to authorize the company to purchase a limited amount of its own ordinary shares. I would like to emphasize that the directors would only do so if they were satisfied that it was necessary and in the best interest of our shareholders and could be reasonably expected to result in an increase in earnings per share. The authority will expire at next year's AGM. Resolution 19 seeks authority to call general meetings other than annual general meetings on 14 days' notice. The directors' intention is to only call general meetings on less than 21 days where such shorter notice period is merited by the business of the meeting or thought to be in the interest of all of our shareholders. That concludes the summary of resolutions. Once the meeting is over and you have completed your poll card, please place it in one of the ballot boxes at the back of the room. These will be collected half an hour after the meeting is closed, and we will let you know, we'll make an announcement 5 minutes before. Any cards that are not placed in the ballot box by this time will not be counted in the poll. To assist you with completing the poll card, we will leave the resolutions up on the screen. And as I mentioned, they are on the back of the handout that you received when you registered today. If you do require any further assistance, I will be available after the meeting. My company secretariat team are also here, and we do have Equiniti, our registrars. The results of the poll, including the proxy votes already received in respect of each resolution will be announced later today through our regulatory information service and posted on our company's website as soon as we can. We will happily post the results to any of you that don't have access to the Internet. So please do let us know if you would like to receive an update. I'll now hand back to Roger for his closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you, Vicki. Well, that concludes the business of the meeting. Thank you for your interest and for coming along today. We look forward to meeting you over a cup of tea or coffee. Thank you very much.