Vertu Motors plc (VTU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Vertu Motors plc year-end results for the year ended 28th of February 2023. I'm joined this morning by Karen Anderson, our Chief Financial Officer; and my name is Robert Forrester, Chief Executive. On Slide 2, we set out what we think are the key investment case elements for Vertu. And Vertu has actually grown from a start-up cash shell in December 2006 to what is now the third largest automotive retailer in the United Kingdom. And we believe that we have a very strong strategic position. The first element of our investment case is the delivery of scale benefits. We have a management team that is very stable and has the capacity to do more. We've got strong OEM relationships with our manufacturers. And indeed, we've got -- we represent more brands than any other automotive retailer in the U.K. And the strong relationship and the spread means that we've got more scope to gain market share with each of the manufacturers over the next few years. We're not hitting limits. We've also got a very strong IT capability, marketing capability. And our management, because of our scale, is very franchise-aligned. We think that drives specific scale benefits. Our business stretches from sales into aftersales, and this creates an opportunity to maximize spend over the customer life cycle. That's aided by our in-house technology and platforms, but also by the strong culture of colleague and customer satisfaction, which is at the root of our strive for operational excellence, ultimately to drive customer retention. Cost optimization in the current environment is clearly critical. And again, our in-house technology platforms provide opportunities to take costs out and to make us more productive. We have a very scaled marketing platform with strong brands which give us the ability with add-on acquisitions to drive further synergies. Our aim ultimately is to drive long-term sustainable cash flows and maximize returns. And underpinning that is a vigorous capital allocation mindset and portfolio management, be it growth through investments, multi-franchising to maximize the throughput through the outlets we have or in deep pruning, which is to look at assets or businesses that are not performing or don't make an appropriate return and to prune them out of the business. On Slide 3, if we look at the year we've just gone through, it was a critical year really in reshaping the group as we've come out of the COVID period. We've delivered growth via predominantly the Helston deal, which moved us to 189 operating sales outlets and got us closer to parity between value franchises and premium franchises. It really was quite a considerable acquisition for us, the largest in monetary terms we've ever undertaken. We've hit GBP 4 billion revenues for the first time. And through numerous upgrades of profit during the year, we ended with GBP 39.3 million of adjusted PBT, and that was really with very little contribution from the new dealerships that have been acquired due to seasonality. So there's more to come. Our net tangible assets of 65p remained strong, and that was underpinned really by very, very strong cash flow generation, GBP 54.3 million free cash flow, and we really worked hard on that. That allowed us to reduce net debt at the end of February from the expected GBP 100 million to GBP 110 million, which was set out at the time of the Helston acquisition in December to a very creditable GBP 75 million, which shows the capacity of the business for generating cash and the conservative level of the cash that we've got. Results though don't just happen, they are driven by colleagues and management within the business, doing the right things for customers. And you can see, on the bottom right, our Great Place to Work score is 82.9%, it's very credible. And in used cars, we have sector-leading Net Promoter Score of 86.3%, which is excellent. So with that overview, I would like to pass to Karen to review the financial performance.

Thank you, Robert. Slide 6 sets out some of our financial KPIs achieved over the last 5 years. And as Robert has already mentioned, group revenue has exceeded GBP 4 billion for the first time, representing a growth of 11% on last year. Core group revenue grew 6.5%, accounting for approximately half of the year-on-year increase in revenues. It was largely the result of rising vehicle prices. The remaining growth arose from acquisitions. Adjusted PBT of GBP 39.3 million represents a reduction on the historic results achieved last year, but is clearly above the level achieved in each of the previous 3. Continued strong cash flow -- free cash flow generation was seen in the period with GBP 54 million generated in FY '23, a record for the group. Tangible net assets of GBP 224 million are underpinned by the group's substantial freehold and long leasehold property portfolio of over GBP 300 million. Slide 7 shows a summarized income statement. Gross margins have reduced year-on-year. And whilst gross profit per unit on new and used vehicles remain above historic norms, they are lower than the levels enjoyed in FY '22. Vehicle prices have remained high, and this has had a dampening effect on percentage margins delivered from vehicle sales. The group has also seen reduced aftersales margins because of technician and salary increases. Total group operating expenses have been impacted by acquisitions, pay rises, higher energy costs and our investment in digitalization, and I'll cover this in more detail shortly. Net finance charges have increased because of rising interest rates, the increased level of borrowing following the Helston acquisition and an increase in manufacturer stocking charges as new vehicle supply constraints have eased, extending out the pipeline of funded new vehicles. Non-underlying costs in the period include acquisition costs in respect of the Helston acquisition of GBP 2.7 million and a noncash goodwill impairment charge of GBP 1.5 million. Turning over to Slide 8. This is a profit bridge of adjusted PBT compared to the prior year. Core group gross profit saw significant growth in the new retail and fleet and commercial sales channels, driven by increased total volumes and high margins. As expected, used vehicle gross profit declined from the exceptional highs of last year as used vehicle gross profit per unit reverted to more normal levels. All of the group's -- the core group's aftersales channels saw a year-on-year improvement in gross profit generation. The impact of cost inflation is clear and with more detail I'm going to give on the next slide. So turning over to Slide 9. This shows further detail on the core and the group total underlying operating expenses. The group has always had a strong focus on the control of costs with initiatives such as war on waste. This initiative involves colleagues at all levels of the business, involves public fleet tables of cost savings, has communication through regular team briefs and checklists and posters in all group buildings. The application of the disciplines in this program have actually helped the group to deliver a 25% saving on its gas usage and a 5.8% reduction in energy consumption compared to FY '22 like-for-like, and that is a vital saving for us given the substantial rise in energy costs. The impact of inflation, such like those energy costs and rises in national minimum wage, clearly can't be avoided, but the group remains focused on improving process efficiency and in the use of data to ensure spend is optimized. Corporate costs overall rose 7.7% over the year. In terms of detail within this, clearly, the group's biggest single cost is salaries. These costs rose 7% in the core group, driven by reduced vacancy levels, aided by the action we took on pay as well as investment in central functions such as our concierge customer retention and digital development teams. Energy costs have increased by over 70% by GBP 3.3 million year-on-year despite reduced energy use. And this was expected given the group's fixed price energy contract, which ended in September 2022. We are currently executing on our energy purchase strategy, which we detailed in our interim results presentation. And this includes the target of 10% of our energy driven from self-generated solar energy, which Robert will cover them in more detail shortly. The group continues to invest in its digital infrastructure and data security, and this has consequently seen IT costs increase year-on-year. Increases in other cost areas include the return to more normal activity post restrictions as well as the impact of inflation. Slide 10 summarizes the group's strong balance sheet. Intangible assets grew by GBP 21.7 million in the year, and this increase is due to the Helston acquisition. The headline payment in respect of goodwill for this acquisition was actually GBP 28.6 million, but finalized intangible assets after all other adjustments relating to this acquisition were GBP 23.4 million, that's GBP 5.2 million lower than the headline payment as cash profits from the 1st of September to the date of acquisition in December accrued to the group and so reduced goodwill. The group's pension scheme remains in surplus and is fully funded under the actuarial basis, requiring no cash contributions from the company. I'll cover more detail on the group's substantial property portfolio in a second, but this property portfolio is what is underpinning the group's tangible net assets per share of 65.3p. Inventory levels overall have naturally increased because of acquisitions completed in the year, but also due to the easing of supply of new vehicles which has increased the level of new vehicle inventory in our pipeline. The group maintained tight control over used inventory levels, with like-for-like used retail inventory declining by about GBP 6.8 million compared to the position at 28th of February 2022. This represents a unit decline of 2.3%, with a lower cost per unit as well as the group-retailed older vehicles. Turning to Slide 11. This shows the cash flows of the group and the net debt position at the end of the year. Net cash flow from operating activities of GBP 80.8 million benefited from a GBP 23.7 million reduction in working capital in the year. This predominantly arose from increased supply of new vehicles where increased pipelines of inventory saw funded consignment stock levels increase, creating a bad cash flow advantage in the year. If you remember, the opposite was true in the prior year, where reduced stock levels saw a VAT outflow. Free cash flow of GBP 54.3 million was generated from the net cash flow from operating activities, and this was a record. In terms of the allocation of this cash generated, GBP 130 million of net cash was expended on acquisitions and in the purchase of freehold property, the largest element of which was clearly the Helston purchase, which saw a net cash outflow of GBP 115 million. Capital expended on the acquisition -- of the expansion of the group, such as our multi-franchising activity, we spent GBP 3.5 million on that activity, whilst GBP 11.9 million has been returned to shareholders in the form of dividends or share buybacks while certain movements on the group shares such as purchases into our EBT, absorbed a further GBP 1.4 million of cash. Overall, excluding lease obligations, the cash increase in net debt was GBP 92 million in the period, with closing net debt of GBP 75.3 million. The group renegotiated its debt facilities during the year, increasing its acquisition revolving credit facility from GBP 62 million to GBP 93 million and adding a third bank to our lending syndicate. This loan is for an initial period of 3 years with the option to extend for a further 2 years out to December 2027. In addition to the renewed revolving credit facility in order to fund the Helston purchase, a second 20-year mortgage of GBP 74.8 million provided by BMW Financial Services was drawn. And finally, the group's used vehicle stocking facility provided by Lombard was also extended from GBP 35 million to GBP 70 million. Turning to Slide 12. This sales has created a focus on disciplined capital allocation of the group. The balance between investment and growth to deliver on the group's strategy and shareholder returns is vital. And the group has the asset backing, gearing and free cash flow generation to ensure that all of these elements of capital allocation can be served in terms of growth and reinvestment in operations, which delivered significant growth in the year with a net addition of 31 sales outlets. We've also added the ancillary business Wiper Blades, which augments our existing Aceparts business. Fixed asset additions in the year totaled nearly GBP 24 million, with about GBP 11.8 million of this were considered replacement capital expenditure. And this replacement capital expenditure figure is expected to rise in FY '24 to GBP 16 million because of the acquisitions we've completed in the year. We anticipate that a further GBP 5 million will be sent on green investments, such as solar LED lighting and EV chargers next year. And finally, an anticipated spend of GBP 17 million will further augment the group's number of sales outlets or increased capacity. And this includes significant investments in a new site for Toyota and Ayr of approximately GBP 5 million, the expansion of our Toyota business in Chesterfield and the additional capacity to our Exeter BMW dealership, which actually won BMW Retailer of the Year. The Board closely manage the group's substantial property portfolio to maximize returns, and I'll provide you with some more examples of this on the next slide. In terms of return to shareholders, an increase in the final dividend is proposed, which will increase the full year dividend from 1.7p per share to 2.15p per share, representing an increase of over 25%. This dividend is covered 4x by diluted adjusted EPS for the year. And the group has also spent nearly GBP 6 million on the repurchase of its own shares in the financial year and has the authority for a further GBP 3 million of purchases, which the Board intends to deploy in FY '24. Slide 13 is my final slide and provide some examples of the group's work to maximize its return from its property assets. Starting with the images, you can see before and after images of our multi-franchise site in Dunfermline, specifically the development of the old Rapid Fit workshop bay into the Vauxhall showroom. We actively manage our portfolio, conducting half yearly reviews of manufacturers to arrive at an Add, Hold, Reduce or Avoid rating of each. And this informs our multi-franchising activity, which grows the throughput of each of the group's buildings. We also prioritized pruning decisions such as the disposal of a stand-alone accident repair operation in Newcastle, which had not been generating an appropriate return. The business has been sold subsequent to the year-end, and we expect to dispose of the long leasehold property shortly, delivering a total cash inflow of GBP 1.6 million. Indeed, between FY '19 and FY '22, the group has established a track record of disposing surplus properties over that period, yielding GBP 6.2 million of cash and generating GBP 1.2 million of property disposal profits. Surplus property assets, including the Newcastle accident repair center I have just described, are expected to yield proceeds of approximately GBP 9.5 million over the next 12 months. Included in these is land adjacent to our new -- our Glasgow Nissan dealership, where planning has just been granted for a residential development subject to certain conditions, and proceeds of GBP 5.5 million are expected to be realized in FY '24. I'll now pass back to Robert, who will give you an update on operational performance and strategy execution.

Thank you, Karen. We'll now look at vehicle sales markets and performance on Slide 15. Manufacturing is starting to recover from the COVID and post-COVID supply issues, which we've seen affect all manufacturers. And the SMMT last week upgraded its forecast for new vehicle car registrations to 1.83 million as it continues to increase its expectations for calendar year 2023. This is, however, a far cry from peak car markets of around 2.6 million that we've seen in previous decades. The pandemic's or the post-pandemic period, so retail being prioritized as a channel by manufacturing, and we're now seeing in the last 6 months that coming through. So we're seeing fleet and Motability far stronger than retail as that balance to more normal markets takes place. Motability, for example, has seen considerable growth, as you can see. Our like-for-likes were up 28.4% in that period and actually subsequent to year-end, even more. We are the largest partner with Motability in the U.K. And indeed, Motability is our largest customer. And we have 34,000 vehicles on our Motability fleet, which guarantees us a service every year over 3 years for that fleet. So it's a major contributor to our overall success. The group saw strong outperformance against SMMT registration data in Motability, fleet and indeed, the van market, double-digit performance, which is absolutely great to see. And that was combined with strong margins, with margins in new vehicles hitting record highs, and that clearly drove the element on the profit bridge of higher gross profit levels. It's very pleasing to see that in each of the channels, we actually grew our market share, both in new cars, bikes, Motability and indeed, funds and balanced 6.1% market share is clearly very considerable and growing. Returning to used cars. This is the flip side, really, of a number of years of missing new car sales. We think there are around 2 million missing used cars now due to missing new cars previously. And those supply constraints are clearly having an impact, and actually broadly positive impact. We've certainly taken up the challenge of supply and are retailing more older cars, and that's actually helping our service and parts departments because older cars need more refurbishment and therefore need more hours and parts. And you can see in the table on the top left that actually we traded, i.e., sent part exchanges out of the group to auctions, for example. Now that declined by 14% on a like-for-like basis as we took more and more cars than we would traditionally trade and retail them. And then actually, in the last few weeks, we've launched an internal auction so dealerships can auction their cars internally to other group dealerships to try and keep more and more cars within our business to generate more retail stock. We have been successful, we think, in terms of implementing strong pricing strategies and stock management strategies. And that has improved our return on investment in used cars. One of our issues, which I think we've spoken about before, was actually underselling cars as much as overpricing cars and keeping them for too long. So we're very pleased with where we've got to, to that. Our margin per unit remains strong, higher than pre-pandemic levels. But clearly, with record sales prices and our sales prices and new starts were up GBP 2,000 year-on-year, credibly -- clearly, margin percentages [ have come there ]. If we turn to the very important aftersales part of our business, I'm pleased to report it's an almost universally positive picture with gross profit on a like-for-like basis increasing in every channel, which is good to see and has been a long-term element of our business. The revenue growth in service has been aided by having more technicians in place and clearly, that was our strategy to do that. And as expected, we had a dilution of margin because we clearly attracted and retained technicians using pay as part of that, and that was to be expected. There remains a key area for us in terms of recruiting and retaining more technicians to grow our service work. We're not constrained by the market, we're constrained by technician capacity. And we must remember these are highly trained individuals, very franchise-specific in terms of their training, so a limited resource. We benefit in the business from a very strong and loyal customer base, including 167,000 people with service plans, 34,000 Motability customers. And we often forget this excellent relationships with a large contract hire and leasing companies who we have increased our market share of their service and repair work quite considerably over the last few years. The strength of the service business helps the parts business because clearly, our service departments take parts from our parts operations and they're growing substantially. But we're also gaining significant market share in our trade operations where we sell to independents and body shops. And we've got excellent operational delivery growing our parts businesses, and we believe there's more to come. We have a substantial accident repair business and actually just acquired 2 more body shops in the South West as part of the Helston deal. And we are seeing continued business improvements with our dedicated, excellent repair management. I will discuss the smart repair aspects of that in a few moments. Just diving a little bit more into service. We're providing here some data on Slide 17, which we have not provided before, but we think gives some useful insights into what's going on. You'll see some nice pictures of tires there, and we've grown our tire sales considerably actually over the last 5 years. Actually, year-on-year, tire revenues are up 7% as part of our other revenues within service. And we've gone from GBP 8 million of sales to nearly GBP 15 million in this period, as you can see. We believe this is a major opportunity. The cars are coming into our workshop. They need tires. We have not historically been the natural place to go for tires, but we are increasingly taking market share of that market. And actually, as you look forward to more electrified vehicles coming into our workshops, tire usage actually goes full, and this is going to be a growing market for us as we go forward. We've got lots of strategies in place to maximize customer life cycle revenues, including tires. The top part actually shows some interesting data around average invoice values. These are customers who bring their car in for a service, and what is the actual bill and the bill comprises the service element, which is known beforehand. But then if we identify additional work or indeed tires, then we can clearly build that at the end of the day on top. What's interesting is that the average invoice value changes with the age of the vehicle. I mean it's not rocket science, it's a -- older vehicles need more wear and tear. But actually, what's interesting is it peaks at about 4 to 5 years at over GBP 300. And interestingly, the average age of a car coming in for service in our network is actually 4.7 years, whereas actually, historically, people would have thought that we only service vehicles within the initial warranty period of, say, 3 years. But we've been very successful in attacking the older service market with a number of useful strategies. The mix in terms of aging of the part, obviously, the 0 to 3-year parts coming down due to lack of new car sales, so the part is aging and that's providing us with a tailwind. In addition, vans have a higher average invoice value and our linkages with the contract-high companies and selling vans locally from our dealerships has increased the number of vans that have actually come into our workshops. We can further increase our average invoice value by focusing on our vehicle health check process, so the identification of work consistently, the selling of safety-related items that need to be done, which the customer may not have been aware of is still not maximized. Tires, clearly, I've mentioned, but also other add-ons, for example, wiper blades, et cetera. And we've put new processes in place to give customers the option of adding extra things on, and I'll come on to that later on. So if we turn to our strategic update. Our strategy slide has been very consistent for quite a period. And our strategy is to increase long-term sustainable cash flows. That's what we are about. That is underpinned by seeking to have operational excellence to maximize the returns of the businesses we have and follow the right capital allocation decisions. So you can see 4 key pillars in terms of our strategy. Pillar 1 is growth, making the right investment decisions. But once you bought something, it's about integrating it and actually adding value. And a question which our Board actually does ask from time to time of businesses is, are we the right owner for this business, which I think is an excellent question, because if we're not the right owner for the business, then clearly, we shouldn't own it. Somebody else might pay us more for that business. The flip side of this growth is actually another very useful discipline around pruning to identifying businesses that don't work for us from a returns perspective. Karen gave the example of the body shop in -- the incident repair center in Newcastle or indeed property assets, which need reallocating, i.e., let's get the cash in on them and reallocate it to higher-return operations. So that growth pillar is clearly very important, and the current year has clearly shown that. Our digitalization strategies, and I'll go through some very specific examples shortly of where that's adding value, but we see that as having 2 major elements. One is enhancement of customer journeys to make customer satisfaction higher and to enhance retention, but also to remove cost from the business and increase productivity and actually probably to increase colleague satisfaction by making jobs easier for colleagues and making their life easier, which gives us higher productivity. We need the latter clearly to counter the cost headwinds, which we're seeing in the U.K. during that time. The third pillar is around colleague and customer focus. And really, that is the bedrock of operational excellence. Dealerships do not run themselves. You've got to have the right management with the right colleagues doing the right things at the right time for customers, delivering what we promised to deliver. So having motivated, well-trained colleagues who have a smile on their face and deliver for customers is absolutely critical and core to what we do. The final element is ancillary businesses, and I will discuss those in a little bit more detail in another slide, but these have to be complementary. They have to have an element whereby they're adding to the overall group strategy in terms of synergies. We don't have dealer -- businesses that are just on their own and actually have nothing to do with the core group. They have to complement the core group. Clearly, at the bottom there, you can see sustainability goals and we think a lot about sustainability. We've been in business not that long, since 2006, but actually having a business that is sustainable is really quite important. And we see sustainability as defined as to continue to exist and flourish in the long term, that is our definition of sustainable and that has to protect shareholder value. So to go on Slide 20 and just discuss that a bit more. We clearly need the business model that is sustainable, able to continue over a period of time. And that is the core job of the Board and indeed, management. The first element, which actually tends to get overfocused on in the current environment, is actually environmental, but it is clear, hopefully, to everybody that why is an efficient use of resources is critical to our profitability and indeed to the management of our reputation as a business. So we partner with manufacturers who are capable of making the investment and having success in the area of electrification. We invest alongside them in terms of charging points, for example. We also need to make sure that in order to have long-term sustainable cash flows, that we're making appropriate use of the best ways of generating energy and using energy, in fact, minimizing energy. So we've had a long hard look at how we do that. We outlined our strategy at the interims to try and lower our future energy costs, hence, the investment in solar which is ongoing, hence the investment in LED. Ideally, we want to create a highly productive, efficient business, both in using the natural resources of the world or indeed the natural resources of our workforce. We have to have a highly productive workforce, and we take steps to invest in that workforce through training, development and also technology. We believe it is a social good to have a highly productive workforce, and our digitalization strategy actually helps that. If we turn to the social aspect, we need to be a good contributor to the communities which we sell to, and indeed, our dealerships aren't present. Hence, why we focus very highly on colleague satisfaction and retention. What is our reputation? If we have a dealership that has a poor reputation as a place to work, it will have a poor reputation as a place to buy or have your car service, it's critical. We have numerous local community programs across the U.K., often linked to sports ventures, be it football, rugby clubs, cricket clubs and using the car connections as part of our sports marketing programs to actually get into the local communities and actually add value, and we do some fantastic grassroots work. We also, though, invest in our workforce to make sure we've got the right environment for individual development and success. Our degree of apprentice programs are a very good example of that, where we're really investing in young people who are going to be future leaders in our business. We aim to create a meritocracy where if you learn, if you work hard, if you follow our values, you will see success, and you will get the rewards, and we think that's absolutely critical in terms of our societal input. Thirdly, governance. This is not a dry area for the plc Board Committee. This is critical and embedded within our business. We believe we need a strong values-based culture set from the top. It has to be more than words. And our colleagues actually self-police values. If they see transgressions, they tend to tell us very, very quickly because they're proud of our culture, and that is a very, very good mechanism within our business. The speed at which we've integrated Helston, from a cultural standpoint but also in the systems and control standpoint, goes to the heart of what we're trying to do to be a sustainable business. We've got to have uniform systems, compliance, regimes and controls to give us the sustainability across such a broad spectrum of U.K. geographies. And the work isn't done, the work is never done. But from June, for example, all our ex-Helston management will have monthly seminars on business culture from one of our leadership trainings we use in L.A. So if you look at highlights of our strategy, you can see the 4 pillars: growth, digitalization, colleague and customer focus and ancillaries. I'll deal with 3 out of 4 of those in subsequent slides, but I just wanted to focus on the colleague and customer focus, which again is the bedrock of our culture. You can see here a picture of Steve Harvey celebrating his 60 years service at Bolton Land Rover and what fantastic contribution he has made. But it is absolutely clear that we have to recognize great performance and the contribution that people have made across the spectrum of the job roles that we've got. We have won a number of awards in the year for great customer experience, which is delivered by the committee of colleagues. And that cultivation of that culture and pride is really critical. The training programs we've put in place are bearing fruit. We have the evolution program, which takes frontline [indiscernible] and moves them through supervisor ranks into management ranks. That actually has had a very positive effect in terms of gender balance of supervisors and management roles with far more females coming through to be service managers, for example. At the other end of the spectrum, we have 12 high-potential individuals who've been highlighted as having the potential to take on far more senior roles in the group over the next 5 years, and we're putting a lot of time into their individual development. Let's look at growth, and growth is synonymous in this period clearly with Helston, which took place in mid-December. The integration, we didn't do it over Christmas. It commenced in January, and a lot of our core colleagues have spent a lot of time in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. And I'm pleased to say that by mid-April, all systems have been implemented or rebranding undertaken. We are now sizable player under the Vertu brand in those counties and growing that brand really quite well with well-thought-out marketing strategies. We have identified from the acquisition GBP 3.2 million of synergies, and we believe we're on track to deliver that ahead of time. There are clearly also some learnings for the core group, which will be very interesting in terms of some of the great things that the Helston business, which was a good business, are doing. We also have a clear plan of investment both in the colleagues down in the South West and also their facilities. We have clearly done this before, maybe not at quite at the scale that we've bitten off with Helston, but I wanted just to recap on the performance of the BMW dealerships in the North of England, which we acquired between lockdowns 2 and 3 in December '20, which was somewhat of a great move perhaps. The businesses have lost in 2019 prior to the acquisition of around GBP 6 million. And when we took out the acquisition announcement, we committed to say that we hope to break even in financial year '23. I'm pleased to report to the owners of the business, we've actually delivered GBP 6 million of profit before tax in FY '23, so clearly well ahead. Now it's fair to say that some of those move forward in profit were going to a rebalancing of supply and demand by BMW. But clearly, we have a much stronger business now, much more sustainable. And indeed, BMW have been delighted with those operational improvements, and that helped to unlock manufacturer consent for the Helston deal in itself. So we're very pleased, it's not the finished product yet, but we're very pleased with how that's going. We did this in a site, closed one of the dealerships, Malton, a small rural dealership we closed out in March. It was coming to the end of the lease. We've been able to reduce the cost base to eliminate capital expenditure going forward, and we believe that a significant amount of activity will relocate to York in any event. So we're pleased with this, and I think it has added value to shareholders. Let's turn to digitalization. I just want to quickly go through 2 examples of work we're doing at the moment. It's not exhaustive. The first is we're now launching Vertu Insights to replace our Vertu Analytics used car management systems. This encompasses quite sophisticated technology, a unique algorithm providing real-time used car purchase values both for the web that sell my car, if you want to get a part exchange valuation on the web, our own buyers and for customers working in the showroom. So complete transparency and it moves on an hourly basis. We now have the ability to compare the price of our used cars, our retail price on the Internet with actually what the divisional management think their pricing strategy should be, and we can now see outliers and where we might be underpricing cars or it did overpricing cars. We now have the ability, and you can see it there fixed now, where literally you can press 1 button each day, and it will align your retail prices on a daily basis, if you want, to the divisional strategies. This should help us generate maximized return on investment and move our used car business forward again. Clearly, we want to maximize return on investment and eliminate errors, which lead to aging cars and margin problems. Second element of utilization is actually aftersales. It's fair to say during the COVID period that sales were pushed forward in digitalization as a necessity. We're now catching up on aftersales. We have rolled out a self-service check-in technology actually from a third party, which helps customers to speed up their dropping the car off, checking in the car and indeed picking it up. Customers can actually now do this with speed. That is what customers want. They don't want to be queued up, they don't want it. And while they're trying to get to work, they want to be in and they want to be out. They can actually effectively check in at home. It also frees our experienced colleagues up on service to actually spend time with customers who have a diagnostic problem. You want -- if you're just having a simple service, you don't really want to spend long hours once the service is done. But if you've got a problem with a car, a rattle or whatever it is, you want to speak to somebody and try and solve that problem there. And that is significantly helping customer satisfaction, but I actually think it's helping colleague satisfaction. And we're certainly seeing higher levels of productivity from colleagues due to this technological input. There are obviously 2 other benefits we're seeing from this technology. One is add-on sales. If you're hired as service adviser with a queue of 5 people, you're unlikely to have a structured sales process to try and sell add-on products. You just want to process people. Whereas actually, the terminals don't actually know there's a queue of 5 people. In fact, there shouldn't be a queue of 5 people with the terminals. So it always asks the question, would you like your wiper blades replacing? Now clearly, we can do some cover stuff in the back end because we should know with mileage and wear and tear actually, whether they will need their wiper blades replacing, but the computer always asks and it doesn't mind if the customer says no. So we're seeing an increase in sales. The final element is actually asking the question of the cost upon checking, have you thought of replacing your car? Or would you like to sell your car? And that's producing sales leads and used car purchase leads, which are very, very helpful and again, a benefit of this technology. Turning to the ancillary businesses, and we are making good progress. Probably our most successful ancillary business, time per pound is done as direct. The business cost us GBP 7 million just before first lockdown. And I'm pleased to report we made GBP 2.85 million profit before tax, and that doesn't include the profits within the group of supplying 1,500 rounds in the year 2 Vansdirect. So it's an excellent investment, excellent return on investment, and we are very, very happy. The Taxi Centre, which is a national business, selling taxis to private hire operators, that was broadly dormant during COVID. Taxi business has clearly collapsed, no one left the house. And it's become a very, very thriving business now, 800 vehicles supply, big synergies into our fleet operations and helping to drive our fleet market share. Aceparts business was originally just a marketplace business on eBay and Amazon. We've now grown it into web with the Powerbulbs and the Wiper Blades acquisition, and we're seeing significant opportunity here for growth. I'm pleased to report, the Wiper Blades acquisition has been fully integrated, and we've closed the warehouse in Worcester and relocated the Aceparts warehouse in Sittingbourne, so reducing our costs. Finally, our smart repair business. We have a substantial network of vans, nearly 120 vans and we'll be 120 very shortly, with significant growth potential to add on. It's a massive fleet that has internal and external customers. We've also got 11 fixed sites, and we're currently investing in a brand-new site in Exeter for smart repair. We've got 10 franchises now in Exeter. And that will be on stream in the next few months to provide internal smart repair facilities to our significant businesses next. Highly profitable business, and we think we've got significant potential to grow not just internal -- capturing internal spend but also capturing more retail business. So final slide for me, which is current trading and outlook. And I'm pleased to report that in March and April, profits were above last year, aided significantly by the acquisitions, which had a very good time in March and April and last year's start-ups, which are coming through to greater maturity. Our core businesses delivered increased gross profit, but clearly, costs were up as expected. New vehicles, we saw a rise in the market, especially in Motability, significant rise in Motability, but we remain a business with a very robust order bank going forward in all segments of new vehicle sales. New vehicle margins also remained strong. Used vehicles, we actually saw lower volumes in used vehicles. That's because this time last year, we ran an April 0% event. We didn't run it this year because we didn't want to be discounting effectively our used vehicle stock. It's supply constrained. So actually, we maintained profits, however, volumes were down. We continue to see strong margins, and margins remain above 2019 levels. Aftersales was a continuation of the trends that I've been through growth again on a like-for-like basis. So if we turn to outlook, I think we can look forward with some confidence actually. The Board expects full year earnings to be in line with market expectations. We are seeing recovering new vehicle volumes. The market is growing, albeit from a low base, and our robust order bank should give us confidence. In used cars, residuals and margins are likely to remain robust due to the inherent supply constraint, which is going to go on for quite a while, I feel. And actually overall, consumer demand has recovered well from the low points around last September. I think the consumer is weathering the storm better than many might have expected. In service, I think the outlook is good, but we could still do with recruiting more technicians, and we'll put our minds and focus to that. And clearly, in a high inflationary environment, cost control is absolutely critical. Though we are seeing signs of moderation in future energy costs, our modeling of future energy cost actually is starting to look reasonably positive, and it's certainly been aided by our strategy. We shouldn't forget actually, this business is a growth business. We have concluded a lease on a former Cazoo outlet in Tamworth, which will open for business 1st of July, and we have further acquisitions in the pipeline. So we are busy. We can move on to the next phase of the development of the business. And in summary, I hope you get the distinct impression that the business is clearly well capitalized, very heavily asset-backed. It's got the firepower despite having done its largest acquisition in the last 6 months to expand further, both in terms of operations and scale. Our digitalization efforts are adding value and helping the business actually moving forward, both in terms of customer benefit and productivity increases. And our people strategy is around making sure we've got the right people who are talented and motivated is a constant job, but I think we're doing well. So we have a degree of excitement about the future, lots of change but lots of opportunities. Thank you.