The Gym Group plc (GYM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome. Thank you for making the time to join us for our Webinar on ESG at The Gym Group. Before I go into the agenda today, I want to start with our founding purpose. John Treharne started this business because he saw an opportunity that was both commercially attractive but also positive for society. Long before we had a sustainability committee or an ESG strategy, he saw that making fitness more affordable to more people would create social value. First in Hounslow, our first gym, and now across the UK. As a result, ESG is authentically built into the DNA of this company. What we do is good for society, and that's why there's so much passion for the things we'll talk about today. And I feel fortunate to lead a business that's a win-win. The better we get at helping more people in more places to build lasting fitness habits, the more money we'll make and the more social value we'll create. Indeed, strong execution on all our ESG plans will support better commercial outcomes. Here's what we plan to cover today, leaving plenty of time for Q&A. I'll start with an introduction, including a reminder of what we do, our investment thesis, and our next chapter, growth strategy. I'll then cover our ESG framework before handing over to Cornelia, David and Ruth to cover different aspects of that framework before summarizing and taking questions. If you want to ask a question for the Q&A after the presentation, please use the Q&A button on your screen. Partly for the benefit of those who are newer to the story, The Gym Group has 237 high-value, low-cost gyms across the UK, serving over 900,000 members who pay on average around GBP 20 a month. We have a focused, scalable proposition based on 3 clear benefits. On value for money, we offer members an affordable monthly price for large, clean, safe gyms that are filled with great equipment and free classes. On convenience, customers can join without being tied to a contract and get access 24/7 to convenient, easy to access locations. And with expert trainers, an industry leading app and lots of online workouts, we're committed to helping our members achieve the results that they're looking for. And the proposition is delivering for our members. Visits per member continue to go up, while satisfaction and engagement is the best in our sector. Underpinned by this proposition, we believe we're very well placed for the future with a clear investment case. Turning to that investment case, our commitment is to deliver sustained growth from free cash flow. This is a rollout growth story underpinned by free cash flow generation. Starting at 12 o'clock on the circle, we operate in a robust and growing market for health and fitness. The long-term growth trend for fitness and gyms, looking both backward and forward, is compelling, supported by a number of helpful macro trends. And in turn, it is the low cost part of the market that is growing fastest. As with other sectors, consumers growing appetite for no-frills propositions means that low-cost, high-value is where the growth is and that's where we are. To take advantage of those market tailwinds, you need a proposition that powerfully meets the needs of a target consumer and can be scaled efficiently. As you've seen, we have that, that our members are more engaged than ever in our proposition. Building on that foundation, we see multiple drivers of growth that we can leverage. We've listed those drivers on the right hand side of the slide and will be focused on pricing new customer acquisition, member retention and opening quality new sites. Strong execution of those growth drivers will increase free cash flow in which we can invest in existing sites, building on the GBP 27 million free cash flow that we delivered in 2023. When it comes to opening quality new sites, EWC estimate there is at least a decade left of UK white space for low cost gyms. All of this will be powered by 2 things. First is data, investing in an already strong team will optimize decision making across every driver of growth. And the second is technology, where we're building a secure, high-performing digital tech stack to enable rapid execution on the growth levers. To deliver that investment case, we have a next chapter growth plan encompassing 3 elements. The first is strengthen the core, where we're executing detailed plans across pricing, revenue management, retention, digital marketing and operational excellence. Together, these plans are increasing returns from our existing sites and driving growth in like-for-like revenue and cash. The second is to roll out policy new sites. We have a clear selection and launch strategy based on a forensic understanding of our best performing gyms and we expect to open around 50 new sites averaging 30% ROIC over the next 3 years. Those first 2 COGS are very much where our executional focus is for the time being and our update on progress at our interims in September. The successful execution will create more cash capability and confidence to look at new ways to broaden our growth over the midterm. So now turning to ESG at The Gym Group. As I've described, our framework for ESG starts with our founding purpose. From there, based on a detailed materiality assessment including all our stakeholders, we identified 5 focus areas, good health and wellbeing, equality diversity and inclusion, good jobs and career opportunities, data security and privacy and responsibility for the environment. You'll note that the colors in the wheel relate to the United Nations sustainability goals which we considered in the formation of this plan. For us, these all sum up the 3 themes that we are passionate about and want to play our part in delivering: healthy people, healthy communities and a healthy planet. Finally, on the framework, we have defined a set of material issues and related targets that you'll see referenced as we go through the presentation. For the sake of time today, we won't cover data security and privacy, but on that topic, we do have a robust plan and approach set out in our annual report and we can pick it up specifically with anyone who has a particular interest in that area. Before I hand over to the team, I wanted to highlight the fact that our ESG work is not just words. The team are regularly delivering impressive milestones and leading our sector on this agenda. When it comes to healthy people, we're driving impressive increases in average member visits and in social value. On healthy communities, including our own, we're now recognized by the Sunday Times as one of the best places to work in the UK. We're the first national gym chain to achieve ISO 45001 accreditation for health and safety and we're also now a long-term partner of NHS Charities Together. On an healthy planet, we are the UK's first carbon neutral gym chain, the first gym chain to have the Net Zero targets verified by the science-based targets Initiative, and the first gym chain to be AAA rated by MSCI's ESG ratings. I'll now hand you over to Cornelia Woschek, our Business Development and Sustainability Director to talk to you about good health and wellbeing.

Thank you, Will. It is undisputed that regular exercise has a positive impact on people's health and mental wellbeing. By making exercise facilities more accessible to more people, we support our members on their journey to achieve their goals. I recently spoke to a member in [ OATB ] who had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and severe back pain. Through regular exercise and with nutritional advice from our personal trainer, she was able to revert her diagnosis to pre-diabetic, lower her blood pressure and reduce her back pain to an extent that she no longer requires an operation. A member in [ Greenwich ] was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, but has found that regular exercise improved his wellbeing and helps him manage his depression. The parent of a member in Cardiff wrote to us recently to say that her daughter regained her confidence through exercise after 2 significant operations left her feel very unhappy. She's now planning to run a marathon in July and we are wishing her the best of luck. These type of member stories are a great motivational driver for us all. But whilst it is fantastic to know that we have a positive impact on our members and society, it wasn't possible to measure that impact until we came across the social value model created by Sheffield Hallam University in partnership with 4global and Experian. The concept of social value has been around for some time and can relate to a number of different themes. Actions that generate social value can include how an organization supports the local economy, for example by helping local people into employment or buying from other local businesses. Also activities that provide other benefits such as promoting opportunities for disadvantaged groups or reducing waste. Sheffield Hallam's model, however, focuses specifically on the social benefits attributed to regular exercise. It was created for Sport England and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and is being used by the public sector to support investment into sports. The model is being promoted by the UK government and has been adopted by EuropeActive who are working with international universities to expand the model into calculating the social return on investment. And this is how the social value model works. Driving the calculator are factors like volume of participants. The more members hit the threshold of working out at least 4x per month in our gyms, where more social value is being generated. Frequency and duration of activity is also important. Members that work out more often and continue to do so over a longer period of time contribute a higher social value. Another important factor is the demographic and socioeconomic profile of participants. For example, people living in more deprived areas are at higher risk of being inactive and have a higher risk of developing health issues therefore. Getting people in more deprived areas of the UK more active creates more social value. What generates the value to society can then be split into 4 buckets. The first one is health, reducing the risk of developing illnesses such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia, depression and recently also added the list hip fractures and back pain, therefore reducing number of GP visits and treatment cost to the NHS. The model also acknowledges the net cost of sports injuries. Mental wellbeing is the largest contributor with GBP 528 million. It is proven that exercise increases people's general well-being, life satisfaction and happiness. We have all felt the endorphins kick in after a really good workout. The wellbeing valuation approach, which is an established model in many sectors, uses large scale survey data to estimate impact of sport on people's self-reported wellbeing and applies these estimates to calculate the amount of money that would produce the equivalent impact on people's wellbeing. Then we move to individual development. It is only measured for members at the age of 16, 18 and 21 when they finish their GCSEs, A-Level or university and therefore makes up the smallest contribution with GBP 23 million. The link between regular exercise and improved educational attainment in young people is well documented, leading to better jobs for these individuals. Social and community development, exercise is proven to also reduce criminal incidences among young men under the age of 24 and improves social capital to communities like social networks and trust. The income compensation model for social capital measures the theoretical income required to replace the social benefits derived from sport. These 4 areas of social value added up to an incredible GBP 890 million, it was created through our members working out regularly in our gyms in 2023. However, social value is also perfectly aligned with our purpose and increasing social value also drives commercial success. Offering affordable, no contract, round the clock membership improves accessibility to broader audiences and resulting, on average, in higher memberships per gym. Our business model is commercially viable in a wide range of communities across the UK, providing access to underserved communities that are at higher risk of inactivity. Growing our nationwide network again improves accessibility to more people and last but not least, motivating members to exercise. Through CRM, our app and [ in-gym ] activities, we are focused on increasing member visits, which also has a positive impact on tenure, aligning our interest with our members motivation for joining our gyms. So more members working out more frequently, staying longer, results in more revenue and social value. However, when we think about good health and wellbeing, we don't only think about social value creation, but also about community engagement. Following a rigorous process last year, we have chosen NHS Charities Together as our long-term charity partner. Our charity's goals align well with our focus on health benefits through exercise. The damage to health through inactivity places more pressure on the NHS and together we can raise awareness of the importance of regular exercise. The charity also provides meaningful volunteering opportunities in local health projects, where with our background, we can have a real impact. Also of utmost important is the health and safety of our employees and members and we are incredibly proud to be the UK's first 24/7 operator to have achieved Stage 4 certification with FITcert scheme. And as Will mentioned earlier, to be the first national gym chain to have ISO 45001 accreditation. As a result, our teams have recently picked up the 2024 Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents Gold Award, ultimate achievement in safety and excellence. I will now hand over to Ruth, our Chief People Officer, who will be talking a little bit more about how we support our amazing teams.

Thanks, Cornelia. So to talk next about good jobs and career opportunities, equality, diversity and inclusion. Our teams interact with hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis, with 60 million member visits happening across 237 gyms every year. So it's in our interest to have an expert and highly engaged team. We know that having these highly motivated people at the front line of our product is what gives us the great customer satisfaction scores that we see. We recognize that as a responsible business, we have an obligation to our people to provide good jobs and meaningful careers. And we also recognize the value of a diverse team that represents the communities we serve and ensuring that everyone feels valued for what they bring and a sense of belonging at The Gym Group. But how do we know if we're doing a good job? Well, as Will mentioned recently, we've been named as a Sunday Times Best Place to Work for 2024 in the big organization category and we're really proud of this as external verification for what we do and the level of engagement that we see in our teams. In terms of team engagement, we measure this internally twice a year and the latest of these surveys closed earlier this month. This last survey backed up that external Sunday Times award and we saw a score of 8.7. This score puts The Gym Group in the top 25% of its benchmark group of consumer services, hotels, restaurants and leisure. We are also proud holders of an Investors in People gold rating that we've held since 2016. And along the bottom of this slide, you can see various other accreditations we have been awarded in recent years. So for me to tell you a bit more about good jobs and career opportunities, I want to first talk about our first target in this area, which is to support 500 people to gain a Level 3 personal trainer qualification by 2030. We set this target towards the end of last year and so far we've seen 48 people achieve their qualification with us. One of the ways that we do this is through our Accelerate Personal Trainer program or Accelerate PT. I'd like to bring this to life by telling you a quick story about this lady that you can see on the slide called Dorcas. So Dorcas quit her role as an NHS Complaints Handler last year to come and join our Accelerate PT program through her local gym group branch, which is in Edmonton Green, North London. Dorcas is 27. She studied hospitality and tourism at university, but was unsure what she wanted to do afterwards. She ended up at the NHS, which as she said, is a fantastic organization and it aligned with her interest in health. But the specific role in complaints wasn't something she felt that passionate about. Having been a regular gym goer from the age of 17 and after months of searching for a new career, she found out about The Gym Group's Accelerate PT program through the Jobcentre. This program is our partnership with the DWP, also The Prince's Trust. It is open to people of all ages who are passionate about fitness and might want to run their own business. Applicants need no prior qualifications, so it's ideal for a career changer like Dorcas and they're supported by us through a 12-week program of online training and in-gym experience to gain that qualification. And they also get to achieve an emergency first aid at work certificate. Once they've completed the program and attained that, all participants are given the opportunity to apply for a fitness trainer role with us and Dorcas has now been employed by Edmonton Green for nearly a year. We've seen 84% of those that come on this program gain their qualifications and so far we've also seen around 40% of them go on to take roles in our gyms. And in a competitive market for personal trainers, this program is just one way that we can provide meaningful jobs and fill the vacancies in our gyms. For 2025, we plan to launch our own personal training academy and this will see us partnering with CIMSPA enhanced status training providers to provide more qualifications to more people so that they can join the fitness community as personal trainers and run their own self-employed businesses. So moving on to talk about the second target. To measure career development opportunity at The Gym Group, we aim for 60% of our operational management team to be working in roles that they have progressed into and to date we have a 54% internal progression rate in our current workforce. To put this into some context, for last year, 40% -- 47% of our assistant general managers were previously fitness trainers and 41% of our general management population have progressed from that role of assistant general manager. To enable this progression, we run a program called Emerging Talent. This is our management development program that provides those assistant general managers and the fitness trainers with the skills required to progress their careers in management. Alongside this core program, we provide regular upskilling and personal development for all our operational and gym support leaders to support their leadership development and their career progression. Mentoring is available to all employees at any time and we support everyone through our talent review process that is known as Coaching for Performance. This program activity will of course continue over this year and into next to support progression, but a particular focus for next year is going to be thinking about succession and future leader programs as we want to be in a position to grow more of our future leaders from our existing talent. We will support this through really clear and defined career pathways for those in-gym support as well as in the gyms in operational roles by continuing with that emerging talent program. So the next area is to talk about -- to talk about is equality, diversity and inclusion. We have a clear picture of our workforce demographics to understand where our gaps are and set stretching targets that you can see on the left hand side of this slide so that we can measure our progress and use the insights to [ inform ] our actions. These targets are principally aimed at ensuring diverse representation with a focus on our senior leadership team and we of course want to drive inclusivity for all, but recognize that to harness strength and diversity, our focus is mainly on gender and ethnicity. However, as well as this, we pay attention to other areas of diversity such as LGBTQI+, age and disability to drive inclusion and belonging throughout the business. Our overall gender split is typical of the norms in the fitness industry, but when we're looking at the senior leadership team, we recognize there is work to do in this area, in particularly -- in particular at board level. We also monitor our progress on equality, diversity and inclusion through our regular engagement surveys and we ask our team how inclusive they feel the Gym Group is. We see good scores in this area with a DNA score of 9. The survey also gives us really useful commentary around the areas that our teams think we need to focus on. To deliver against our approach of support and equal opportunities for all, and to work towards progressing our pledge targets, we prioritize a focus on improving employee wellbeing support, driving an inclusive culture and providing equitable development opportunities. One of the activities we have is our successful employee network groups that focus on 5 key areas of representation of age, gender, LGBTQI+, cultural diversity and disability. These employee network groups are run by individuals from various teams across gym support and from the gyms themselves and they deliver actions and events to drive awareness of how we can all support and champion our colleagues from all backgrounds and ensure equal opportunities for all. Last year, we started a reverse mentoring scheme and this was for some of our ethnically diverse colleagues in the business to mentor a member of the senior leadership team. On the back of the success of this program, we will do more and will widen it from just ethnicity to include reverse mentoring for females. Looking ahead, our plan is to enhance training for all on inclusion and belonging and to run a specific ethnic future leaders program. One final point from me is, as you can see, on the right hand side of the screen, as well as reporting on gender pay gap, we also report on our ethnicity pay gap and we publish these results annually ahead of mandatory requirements. Whilst our gender pay gap is good, we recognize there is work to do to drive down the mean ethnicity pay gap and we are focused on this. So, in summary, we recognize that we have key responsibility to create good jobs to ensure career opportunities and development for our team to drive diversity and foster inclusion. It is the strength of our engaged teams that delivers high member satisfaction scores to drive commercial success for the business and for our investors. Thank you. And I'll now hand over to David, our Chief Development and Sustainability officer.

Thank you, Ruth. Thank you for Cornelia. Okay. So we've talked about the great social impact the business has, the S part of ESG, and I'd like to talk now about the E and the G, the environment and governance. As a multisite gym provider, our impact on the environment largely comes from the 237 buildings our members use every day and the carbon emissions generated by them. And according to the UK's carbon budget, building emissions in the UK need to fall by 43% by 2035 relative to 2022 levels. And there are really only 2 ways of doing this. Firstly, we need to increase the supply of low carbon heat, which for us means transitioning away from the gas we burn and the use of low carbon alternatives. We now only install air-sourced heat pumps to produce hot water and actually haven't installed a new gas fired boiler since 2022. Secondly, we need to reduce the energy demand in our buildings whilst decarbonizing the UK grid, which I'll talk about more shortly. The cornerstone to our environmental strategy is a commitment to reduce our carbon emissions to Net Zero by 2045 as Will mentioned. We are the first gym chain to have an initiative and a pathway validated by SBTi, which is the global body responsible for reviewing and certifying Net Zero claims. Our commitment is to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, that's emissions from our own operations by 50% in 2030 and then to fully decarbonize our operations by 2035. Our objective is then to remove our supply chain emissions or our Scope 3 emissions to achieve a Net Zero by 2045. So what progress are we making against this target? Our base year is pre-pandemic 2019 performance and the green line shown on the chart is the overall reduction pathway that we submitted to SBTi. Our Scope 3 emissions make up around 70% of our total and the 2022 overshoot you can see was driven by our expansion program and the opening of 28 new sites, along with other significant capital investment in that year. Identifying, measuring and then limiting Scope 3 emissions will be one of the biggest challenges going forward and we are engaging with our suppliers to help them deliver this. Also worth noting that in Scope 3 emissions, they are calculated on an expenditure-based model rather than specific emissions. So an expensive product that's greener would attract more emissions than a cheap, environmentally damaging alternative, and we need to move towards an actual emissions model, which should result in a lower value. Also to note, the Scope 3 pathway that we have had certified also allows for expansion of the business. Scope 3 is a per gym intensity metric and not an absolute measure. The blue straight line you can see on the chart is our Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction target. These are our direct operational emissions and you can see they are reducing slightly even though we added 59 gyms in that period. The 2023 total is slightly above the target, which is partly due to the carbon intensity metric of the national grid actually increasing in 2023 rather than the expected decrease. And despite purchasing 100% renewable electricity, we are still reliant on the decarbonization of the grid, which is obviously outside of our direct control. However, our own consumption is something that we can act on. So what do we do to continue to drive down our carbon emissions? Driving down our carbon emissions is a win-win, because in doing so, we reduce our energy consumption and our costs. Firstly, we're looking at the consumption of each individual gym and how it performs within the overall estate. Each of these blue columns on the left is the total energy consumption of an individual gym, so we can easily identify core performers and then target them for intervention. We can also look at consumption over any time period, by month, by week or by day of week, and we provide intensity metrics for gym size, so kilowatt hours per square foot and also by membership number and the number of member visits each gym has to give a site by site comparison on the main drivers of that consumption. As well as looking at total energy consumption and comparison between gyms, we also look at the energy consumption at individual site level to see exactly where our energy is used and where our money goes. This graph traces the power consumption at 1 site in Grimsby and shows the main items of plant and equipment. For example, the pale blue line that you can see is the power consumed by the air conditioning system. What you can see is the air conditioning is idling for the first 2 weeks of the year with near zero consumption. You can then see the heating kicks in during a cold snap. But obviously in the summer, our air conditioning will be working much harder to cool the space and we should expect to see its consumption rise significantly. So the air conditioning load is naturally highly variable, depending on both the outside temperature and the gym occupancy. And people like their gyms nice and cool. We tend to say, if you're feeling too cold, then you're just not working out hard enough. What we need to do is make sure that we're not unnecessarily heating our gyms overnight, as much as over-cooling our gyms during the day and to be able to vary the operation between winter and summer months to optimize performance and we have systems in place to do just that. Where I believe we have a real advantage is that we have a relatively young estate with energy costs, operating efficiency and life cycle costs taken into consideration at the outset. We don't have any real legacy buildings to deal with and we have always followed the principle of efficiency by design, rather than having to deal with a problem at a later date. A good example of this is our ventilation systems. Like this one on the right, almost all our air handling units are fitted with a heat recovery wheel, so we're not wasting the energy we've already put into heating or cooling the gym when we're bringing fresh air from outside. So armed with this data and information, we put in place various energy saving initiatives. Firstly, the low-cost, no cost opportunities lie in great housekeeping and engagement with our teams. People can still make a real difference here. We have a team of regional facilities managers who are constantly in the field maintaining the estate and carrying out energy audits. These guys are our eyes and our ears on the ground when it comes to the plant and the equipment. We also have our gym teams that we target with initiatives such as 20 is Plenty. A timely reminder to operate the air conditioning as efficiently as possible where we don't have that central control. We don't want our gyms trying to hit 16 degrees on days like today, 20 is Plenty low enough. We're also investing in technical solutions such as voltage optimization. This is a simple box of tricks that reduces the site level voltage, resulting in a lower power consumption. These are relatively low cost units at around GBP 10,000 per site, and deliver an average reduction in electricity consumption of 8% and therefore a simple payback of around 2 years. We have an ongoing rollout program and aim to install another 50 units this year. There are also longer term initiatives such as solar panels we are looking at. The picture is of a site in Uxbridge, which opened last year, where we put a small solar array on the roof at the same time as fitting it out. Payback at the moment is typically 7 to 8 years, with a return on investment approaching 20% but that's obviously depending on the price of electricity. And the cost of solar panels has reduced dramatically over recent years, and they're still expected to fall further. So we continue to explore this opportunity. We actually also have a second installation at our site in Cambridge, which in the past 3 years has generated 98,000 kilowatt hours, worth around GBP 20,000, a 100% of which has been consumed by the gym. And of course, we shouldn't forget water. Water is one of our Scope 3 emissions, and is also a significant cost to the business. We only use water for showers and toilets, but our water costs more than the gas that we use to heat it up. The difficulty with water has been the poor performance of the water providers and the industry as a whole in providing good quality consumption and billing data. So we are rolling out our own meter reading network by fitting limpets, which you can see here. We send daily meter readings to a central system where we can benchmark consumption and detect leaks and other issues early. Also with showers being a main consumer of water in our gyms, we install showerheads with a relatively low flow rate, a unit that consumes 1/3 less than our original showerheads. We've also fitted flow regulators to all the original showerheads. And as we have actually over 2,000 showers, that's a considerable saving in both consumption and cost. Okay. So we've talked a lot about our material issues, our environmental strategy, the E part of ESG, the social benefit we deliver, the S part, which just leaves G -- G for governance, which is really about how do we make this all happen in a way that delivers our objectives and is of value to the business. And it wouldn't be governance without a structure and we do have a formal structure with a central sustainability board committee, chaired by one of our non-execs and attended by everyone here and other members of the board. And then operationally, we have a sustainability working group that has people from EDI, health and safety, and ESG to coordinate and align strategy, targets and performance. But of course, people responsibility for sustainability at The Gym Group is really everyone, delivering great outcomes for our members generates social value. And this is part of our culture and part of our DNA. And with responsibility is therefore part of everyone's function, including the exec who have an element of bonus linked to ESG performance targets. Specifically, this is aimed at driving an increase in social value by increasing member activity. Increasing the number of members that visit at least 4 times a month is a significant driver of social value. We also know members that visit more often, stay with us for longer. So yet another win-win. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges in ESG at the moment is keeping pace with the development of guidance and legislation. There is an array of possible frameworks and lots of acronyms in what is a very broad subject area. We initially based our reporting on GRI, the Global Reporting Initiative, and have developed and published information aligned with SASB and with CDP, the Carbon Disclosure Project. It's from CDP along with other organizations such as WWF. The science-based targets initiative was developed, which we talked about earlier. More recently, we have seen TCFD, the Task Force for Climate-based Financial Disclosures that's become a central part of regulated reporting requirements. And I'm pleased to say that for several years, we have been building our own disclosures around all of these initiatives, which are now either consolidated into or do align with the requirements of ISSB International Sustainability Standards Board, which is now the international governing body. And ISSB, in turn, has now produced 2 key documents, SNAP, only known as S1 and S2, which are specifically directed at capital markets and I quote, they are designed to build competitive advantage in the cost of capital. It is these 2 documents that provide the basis for all of the ESG reporting standards that are being implemented around the world, including the UK, which is developing the UK SDR, the sustainability disclosure requirements and what will be the associated sustainability reporting standards. This legislation is likely to be introduced next year with the first reporting year in 2026. Areas such as the recent anti-greenwashing rule and the Transition Planning Taskforce guidance will all be incorporated within the UK SDR. So we believe we are well prepared for alignment with any coming legislation. And finally, ESG isn't just about doing the right thing or a nice thing to have. ESG can create value for the business by mitigating risk and recognizing opportunities, and we believe we are in a strong position as the requirements of regulators and investors continue to develop. As you've heard, ESG is also fully aligned with our business objectives. The more we grow our business, the more social value is created, and the more we reduce our carbon emissions, the more money we can save on utility bills. But that transition to a Zero Carbon economy and the impacts of climate change will be challenging, and we are focused on mitigating the resulting risks now and realizing opportunities that it may present. So thank you for listening. I'm now going to hand back to Will to summarize today and introduce the Q&A. Will?

Thank you, David. We will very shortly take questions, but before that, I'll summarize the presentation. Firstly, we have a clear investment case with a commitment to deliver sustained growth from free cash flow. It was a growth story underpinned by free cash flow. We have a detailed next chapter growth plan and it is enhanced by our ESG activities. As I said at the beginning, in this business, continued ESG progress supports profitability. Most critically, more members exercising more for longer equals social value and revenue growth. And in an operational business like ours, the work we do to engage our teams and manage site costs, including energy management, will support business performance and the continued growth in strong cash flows. As a company, we're committed to positive outcomes like healthy people, healthy communities and healthy planet, and improved returns to shareholders to whom we take our responsibilities very seriously. As we turn to questions, I want to take the opportunity to remind you of some upcoming dates. We have our pre-close trading update on the 10th of July. And then our interim -- and then our interim results on the 11th of September, just bring those up on the screen again. Yes. So the 10th of July for our interim, for our pre-close trading statement and the 11th of September for our interim results where we'll share more detail of our next chapter growth plans. So thank you for listening and we'll now hand over to questions. As a reminder, you can do that by using the Q&A function on your screen. Just while you're doing that, I would finally like to thank the team that you've heard from today, but also everybody in the company. It's a big team effort around ESG. It's something that our people are very, very passionate about and I think it is one of the things that makes this a very special company to work for. But anyway, we will now open up for questions.

Thank you, Will. We have a couple of questions in the question box already. So I'll start with the first one, which is are there any thoughts on the return on investment associated with investments in good jobs in terms of the cost savings that can be delivered from turnover and customer retention vis-a-vis customer satisfaction levels?

Sure, I'll start and then I might hand over to Ruth on that. So you know, at the heart of this business is our gyms with real people exercising, managed by real people, our managers. And so we know that highly engaged managers leads highly engaged members and high performing gyms. So the link is extremely strong, and that's one of the reasons why we do spend so much time on engagement. Again, I think for John, it was a founding principle to treat people brilliantly and in return they do a great job for the company. And I think that's exactly how it operates here.

Yes. And I'd probably just add that whilst cost of turnover, cost of labor, cost of recruitment is a moving piece, we do look at that and it's something we can measure. Ultimately, we're pretty proud of our management retention rates sitting quite strongly at 80%. We compare favorably when it comes to turnover or retention, when you look at other multi-site businesses.

Thank you. So the next question asks, what share of the estate could potentially house solar panels? Does this opportunity have any influence on the selection of new sites?

To answer the second point first, does it influence selection of new sites? The answer would be no. We are more interested in actually being in the right location for performance of a gym, but in saying that we do now, at the early stages of negotiating a lease and place into heads of terms, hopefully an agreement that we have the ability to put solar panels on the roof, because typically we're not responsible for the roof and don't necessarily have access to it, it remains with the landlord. However, it will add asset value to the property by installing the panels. In terms of how much of the estate is suitable for panels, we obviously have a number of buildings, a number of gyms that operate out of basements, in multi-storey buildings, in multi-use buildings where we are not able, we don't have access to a roof. The other question that always faces is, on existing estate, we need consent from the landlord to install the solar panels, which retrospectively can be difficult to do. So we haven't actually put a number on exactly how many sites we could achieve the rollout on, but we expect -- I would expect it to be a sizable percentage of the estate, but very dependent on landlords and that will take in site-by-site basis that we'll have to look at.

And I think, just to echo David's first point there, when it comes to the selection of sites, the primary focus is on finding sites that return 30% ROIC, based on a very forensic understanding of the sites that are already returning 30% ROIC, so that would be the principal consideration.

And I have another question, which is sort of a follow up to that one, but perhaps slightly more general. Your strategy is to find 50 new sites over the next 3 years. Obviously, you have lots under review, but how does your ESG framework contribute to the selection of those sites, given that the new strategy skews to urban, residential and greater London areas, is one more compatible with the ESG strategy than the other.

So interesting question. I think we are an affordable gym and we like to make fitness accessible to more people. So wherever we are putting new gyms, we're introducing new people into fitness and we're providing that particular community with a new, affordable option when it comes to fitness. And I think that is true whether it's in greater London or any other part of the country. So I think the 2 things are fundamentally extremely well aligned. And then, as David said, we'll also think hard about how we can make the sites as efficient as possible to run. So I think the focus on the sites where we think the returns will be highest, I don't think is sort of dissonant with what we're trying to do from an ESG point of view.

Okay, another question, which is on Scope 3, emissions. And the question is, can you talk a little more about your Scope 3, emissions through the lens of lifecycle emissions of cardio gym equipment is enhanced technology on those pieces of equipment, accelerating replacement cycles? No, we're not seeing technical advances on the equipment itself, shortening the lifetime of equipment. In fact, probably quite the opposite. Working closely with our suppliers, we are looking at opportunities to extend life of it, primarily through recycling and refurbishment of gym equipment. So actually, it goes back out to site at end of what it might be is normal useful life and we can extend its life. In terms of technical, no, we've not seen any kit particularly removed as a result of advances in technical pieces of kit.

Okay. And a question on social value. I think there's a bit of detail in the presentation on this, but are we able to disclose how we quantify social value?

So we use the social value model that has been generated or has been created by Sheffield Hallam University with a lot of academic rigor, and is also widely accepted or adopted across the UK by the government and by councils and everybody else. And we focus completely on the social value generated through exercise. So we are not calculating at all into our social value, anything around employment, taxation or other aspects that we probably impact as well, positively.

Another question, what is the average age demographic of The Gym Group staff, particularly relating to the impact of a potential labor government extending the living wage to under 21s.

Okay. So our age demographics in our gym operations teams does skew towards the younger demographic or the younger age group. So yes, so proportionately we have more younger people, though we do have a good range of all ages, both working in the gym support and in gym ops. In terms of the national living wage, we don't differentiate by age, so we pay everybody the same rate of pay regardless of their age. So actually, anything in terms of changing the age rates that any government might do won't have any impact from that perspective.

I've got another question. The 22% increase in visits per member that we've seen since 2019 seems a great measure of customer engagement. Do you feel it is like-for-like, members, i.e. the members we had in 2019, increasing their satisfaction rates? And has the sector lost casual users since the COVID pandemic?

So the first aspect of that is that is like-for-like, in terms of that measure. And yes, we would see it as a very encouraging sign that people are engaging more and more in what we do, and we talk a lot about fitness IQ and that people are more and more informed about how they exercise and want to exercise in a more kind of multifaceted way that very much suits a gym. In terms of the, in quotes, casual user, when we think pre and post, we think we lost some of what we would call the marginal customers, saying that could be marginal, that they lived a bit further away from the site where it could be marginal, that they were further away from the sort of core customer that we tend to have. So I think at the heart of it is a very encouraging thing around engagement with gyms and low cost gyms over the long run. Yes, we think we lost some marginal customers and we're working hard with things like off peak, for example, and our focus on retention to try and sort of close that, like, for like, gap from pre-COVID.

So, I have couple of questions that have come through on email. One is, what would be your requests of a new government following next week's election?

Yes, I think with any government, we see a great opportunity to try and increase rates of exercise and fitness in the UK for all sorts of reasons. So we would absolutely encourage any government to do as much as they possibly can in that area. And given that we have an accessible price point and nationwide coverage, we absolutely think that we can be a really helpful part of the solution when it comes to increased participation in fitness and exercise. So we'd love to see more on that.

So I have another question and this is a moment I think this -- we can poll for further questions. If anyone's got anything burning a hole in their pocket at the moment, but this one here, with the trade of -- trend of hybrid athlete stroke high rots becoming more prevalent in the 25 to 45 age groups. How are you adapting to offer a wider variety of training?

Yes, well, interesting question again. And yes, we absolutely are seeing that trend. So specifically, we're the only low-cost operator offering high rocks and we're looking to roll that out to all of our states. So specifically with regard to hierarchs. But then beyond hierarchs, we're evolving and have over time evolved our gyms so that they suit that kind of -- that wide variety of sort of circuit-based training. So I think our gyms are already very well equipped and set up for that trend. And we also have our own operating -- we have a thing called Series 45, which is our own offering in that kind of space. And I would just come back to. I think it's all good for gyms because it's increasing that engagement, interest, understanding about kind of multifunctional ways of exercising. And the only place you can really do that is in a gym.

Thank you. One more question. Has the introduction of the new pricing model, which I assume means off peak, in particular, positively impacted volume and frequency of attendance and subsequently affected social value?

I think we'd want to pull that one apart, but I think we've introduced, we've rolled it out nationally. We are seeing incremental demand from that most accessible price point. And we're seeing an increase in visits. We will see slightly lower visit frequency from that group. That's what we would expect and I think that's what we see. But on both of those dimensions, I think off peak and visits, we see those both as positives for the business.

Okay, if there are any more questions anyone wants to ask, I have one final one that I have in front of me, which is how many of the new -- the 50 new site openings? And I think this sort of covers some of the ground we've already covered, are in economically deprived areas. And can these sites deliver the 30% return that you're looking for?

So clearly we don't have our entire sort of pipeline locked down yet. So I can't really sort of speak to exactly the percentage of estate that is going to be in deprived areas, but our gyms are really sort of accessible to a wide range of communities. And the beauty really, of our product is actually that it works really well, wherever sort of we place it, whether it is in a more deprived community or in a wealthier community as well.

And what looks like the last question, how much further do you think the business has to go in delivering utilities, cost savings obviously referring back to the 5% like-for-like reduction that we referred to in the presentation?

Yes, like you mentioned last year on a like-for-like basis, electricity consumption we managed to reduce by just under 5% and we're aiming for a further 3% on top of that for this year as we continue to invest in and deploy capital in energy efficiency measures and we will continue to seek out any opportunities we can and continue to improve year on year.

So I have no further questions and on that basis...

Catherine, I'll maybe just add one more thing in case it wasn't shared just on those upcoming dates so there is no lack of certainty. So pre-close trading update on the 10th of July and then interim results on the 11th of September and at that point we're looking forward to providing a progress update in terms of the execution against our next chapter growth plan. So hopefully 2 dates for the diary and look forward to providing further updates on progress then.