Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for our first-half 2026 results. I am Per Widerström and I'm joined today by Sean Wilkins, our CFO.

Starting with the agenda on slide 2, the format today is deliberately short. I will begin with a brief overview of the context for today's presentation and the first-half performance.

Sean will then take you through the financial results and cash flow in a bit more detail before we open the line for questions. Starting with slide 3, and before getting into the performance, I want to briefly discuss the recommended acquisition by Bally's Interactive, which we announced a little over two months ago.

The announcement followed a comprehensive strategic review initiated by the board after the significant UK duty changes announced in November 2025. Having evaluated a broad range of alternatives, the board concluded that the recommended acquisition represented the most attractive and deliverable proposal available to evoke and its shareholders.

The acquisition remains subject to the relevant shareholder, regulatory, and other approvals, including our own shareholder vote next Monday, the 17th of August. I'm pleased to tell you that progress with the relevant filings is going to plan, and we still expect to complete in the fourth quarter of 2026 or the first quarter of 2027.

As a result, we are keeping today's presentation focused on the reported financial and operational performance. We are not providing forward-looking financial guidance, and during the Q&A, we won't be able to add anything on the transaction beyond the information contained in the published announcement and other formal documentation.

Operationally, our priorities are unchanged. We remain focused on maintaining momentum, serving our customers, supporting our colleagues, meeting our regulatory obligations, and managing the business with discipline through the completion of the transaction.

Turning to slide 4 and the first-half performance. This was a period that really demonstrated the resilience of the underlying business in what was materially more challenging external environment in terms of increased duties in several of our core markets, and most notably, in the UK.

Group revenue was stable at £888 million and increased by 2% on a like-for-like basis, accounting for the 270 store closures versus the prior year. In terms of profitability, the first half had £46 million year-on-year headwind from increased gaming duties.

Against that backdrop, adjusted EBITDA of £150 million was down 10%. While down £16 million year-on-year, the result also shows that the mitigating actions we set out earlier in the year are working and are offsetting a meaningful part of the duty impact.

The second quarter saw a continuation of the Q1 trends we outlined at our full-year results and Q1 update, with the strongest performance coming from UK and Ireland online. Revenue grew 4% and adjusted EBITDA increased 28%.

This despite the additional duties kicking in from April. William Hill Vegas continues to perform very well, supported by the changes we have made to marketing, promotion investment, and customer value to produce better returns.

Retail are also making good progress. Like-for-like revenue grew 4% and adjusted EBITDA increased 5%, despite smaller estate and continuing inflationary cost pressure.

The closure of structurally loss-making shops has improved the economics of the remaining estate, while trading following our machine rollout and improvements to self-service betting terminals has been encouraging. International was more mixed.

Italy and Denmark continued to grow strongly, but that was offset by weaker revenue in Spain, Romania, and the rest of the world. Profitability was also affected by duty increases in Romania and Italy, and by a greater proportion of revenue coming from higher-duty markets.

We have plans in place to address several of these areas, and in Spain, for example, we have made significant product improvements recently, although these had only a limited impact on the first-half results. Overall, the business has responded decisively to a substantial increase in our cost base.

Our focus remains on the areas we control: commercial efficiency, cost discipline, cash generation, and consistent operational execution. I will now hand over to Sean to go through the financials.

Thanks, Per. Turning to slide 6, I'll now take you through the financial performance for the first half in a bit more detail.

Firstly, I'd say performance overall has been in line with our expectations, it's been a decent start to the year, all things considered. That said, the story continues to be mixed across markets and brands, driven by the actions we've been taking to drive growth and improve profitability.

Total online revenue increased 1%. Within that, UK and Ireland Online grew 4%, with gaming up 7%.

William Hill remained the key driver, particularly gaming, where William Hill Vegas continues to grow double digits and go from strength to strength. 888 revenue continued to decline as we maintained a deliberate focus on profitability and customer economics, rather than pursuing low-return volume.

International revenue declined 2%, but the picture varied significantly by market. Italy delivered another strong period, with revenue up 21%, and Denmark grew 13%.

These performances were offset by declines in Spain, Romania, and the rest of the world. In Spain, the improvements made to product and marketing are taking time to translate into the level of performance we want.

Romania continues to be affected by the combination of a weaker economy, higher taxes, and the growth of the unregulated market. We have responded by managing marketing and promotional investment carefully to protect returns.

Retail revenue declined 3% on a reported basis, reflecting the smaller estate with 270 fewer shops than the prior year. On a like-for-like basis, revenue increased 4%, supported by the continued strength of the gaming machines and improvements to self-service betting terminals, including 2,000 new ones being installed, leading to good underlying market share trends.

Turning to adjusted EBITDA, the group delivered £150 million, down £16 million year-on-year, and broadly flat across the operating segments, excluding the increase in corporate costs, most of which is bonus accrual and balance sheet timing. This is despite the significant headwind of an additional £46 million in gaming duty costs year-on-year.

Our original guidance was that we would offset around half of that gross headwind. In the first half, we've actually offset more than half of the headwind, albeit the UK changes were only effective from the 1st of April.

We've achieved this through lower but more productive marketing investment, improved promotional efficiency, and operational cost savings. You really see the impact of our mitigation efforts in the UK and Ireland Online adjusted EBITDA, which increased 28% despite the duty headwind.

The full detail is in the appendix, but we have seen good savings across both marketing and operating costs, driving a much more efficient operation. International is where we are more disappointed with the start to the year, with adjusted EBITDA down 20%.

The reduction was driven primarily by the higher duty rates in Romania and Italy, the shift in revenue mix towards higher-duty markets, and weaker revenue in several markets. While these external factors have compressed gross margin, it nevertheless remains the highest margin of the group segments, supported by leading positions in several attractive regulated markets.

Retail adjusted EBITDA increased 5% despite the reported revenue decline and ongoing wage and cost inflation. The decision to close shops is never taken lightly.

However, in the current external environment, it was necessary to address structurally loss-making locations. The performance of the remaining estate demonstrates the benefits of concentrating resources on a more productive shop portfolio.

Corporate costs increased to £26 million, with the largest drivers being staff bonus accruals, compared with no accrual in the prior-year period, together with the timing of certain balance sheet movements in both the prior year and current year. The bonus accrual will ultimately reflect the relevant full-year performance outcome.

We're not commenting on current trading post-period end, other than to say we continue to trade in line with our expectations. Clearly, one call-out worth making is on the World Cup, which was really successful from an operational point of view in terms of product delivery, commercial plans, and driving customer engagement.

It also exceeded our revenue expectations and provided a good springboard as we go into the upcoming football season. Turning to slide 7 and our cash flow.

This is our usual bridge taking you from opening to closing cash, excluding customer balances. The business generated £85 million of underlying free cash flow in the period, but with exceptionals and other one-off outflows, net debt increased by approximately £37 million.

Together with a lower LTM EBITDA, this meant leverage was up to 5.6 times. Touching on a few of the key moving items.

Working capital was a £14 million inflow, primarily reflecting higher gaming duty accruals, with UK duty paid quarterly in arrears. CapEx of £51 million was slightly front-loaded given the retail closure program and some of our product investment, and we'll continue to be disciplined in terms of capital allocation as we go through the year, ensuring we see sufficient ROI on our plans.

Exceptional costs of £27 million include £5 million for retail closure program and £7 million for the strategic review, as well as the ongoing integration and transformation program we've discussed before. Within other, this includes the repayment at par of the remaining £11 million outstanding on the 2026 William Hill bonds, together with the ongoing TLB amortization of around £2 million.

We also paid £11 million in relation to the historic Austrian gaming tax liability, where the final assessments have now been made and the remaining balance is currently being paid at approximately £2 million per month. At the period end, cash was £106 million and the group had £43 million of undrawn RCF capacity, giving total liquidity of approximately £150 million.

As Per said, we'll be disciplined with our capital allocation and focused on cash generation and balance sheet strength as we move through to completion. Finally, just to say I think this slide and the increase in leverage really illustrates the constraints created by the group's existing capital structure, particularly following the significant increase in gaming duties.

The board considered these constraints carefully as part of the strategic review, alongside the investment required to continue improving the operating performance of the business. The recommended acquisition provides a clearer path to a more sustainable capital structure, which was an important factor in the board's unanimous recommendation.

With that, we'll move to Q&A.

Thanks for that question. UK Online EBITDA, obviously, we were very pleased with the performance there, adding £17 million year-on-year.

The main places that came from, in spite of the headwinds of UK duty, we saw 4% revenue growth and we saw good operational gearing on that. We also, I think, did a very good job in the first half of mitigating the duty increases.

The areas that we've really focused on to achieve those mitigations include significantly more effective marketing. Now, our marketing year-on-year has dropped, but we've still managed to get that 4% growth.

That demonstrates, I think, that we've been much more efficient. This hasn't just been a cost-cutting exercise, we're very pleased with that as an outcome.

The second place we focused on is retail closure. We've shut 70 stores in Q4 last year, 200 stores in Q1 this year.

They were all loss-making stores, and so you can see in the results that retail's improved. We've improved the customer proposition and we've also reduced our overhead.

All of those things have allowed us to mitigate the impact of the UK duty, and allowed us to achieve a good result in UK Online. In International, I think the question's about margin compression.

Where have we seen margin compression? I think there's been probably three key elements to this.

The first is Italy duty, which we saw increase in November last year. Then the second is Romania duty, which took a step up from 21% to 30%.

I think the third thing that's driving margin compression is that we've seen a change in mix of revenue to the higher duty and therefore lower gross profit areas, particularly with the extremely strong growth in Denmark and Italy. Now, our volumes have moved over to the higher-duty markets, and those three things are the things that are driving margin compression across the international business.

I think Ricardo had some more questions, didn't he, Josh?

First question, William Hill Vegas, is it coming from existing or new customers? The honest truth is both, which is good news, obviously.

It's been a good opportunity. I know that the World Cup is a sports event, not a gaming event, but clearly, it's new customers to us and that proved successful to us in terms of us recruiting new customers and those customers certainly get cross-sold onto the gaming.

We've seen both improvements in existing cohorts and new customers. In terms of actives, yes, we have seen that decline across the group.

I think a couple of things driving that. One is we saw some difficult performance across a couple of our markets, particularly Romania and Spain.

Romania's been impacted by significant external events, the increase in duty, leakage to the black market, plus economic negative growth, and Spain, we continue to struggle with product there, although the product has improved significantly over the last quarter. Two reasons there why actives has gone down.

I think the third thing, and you alluded to it in the question, is we are working extremely hard, and we have been, actually, it's been a key part of our strategy, to make sure that we're getting significant value from our players, and that we're driving ARPU and that we're also driving margin within driving ARPU. Those things have been effective.

We've had this strategy in place now for three years and it's definitely paying dividend, and the inference in the question is, are we focused on driving higher value from existing players and that? Absolutely, of course we are.

Number one on our strategic pillars was always customer life cycle management and this is at the heart of customer life cycle management. Is there a fifth, isn't there?

Is there a fifth there?

Look, my view is there wasn't any particular sporting luck factor in this. We have intentionally been focused on the higher-margin products, particularly accas and bet builders.

We've very significantly improved the product that we've got, particularly in the UK, but also international, around acca and bet builder and higher-margin products. It's no surprise to us at all that the margin on sportsbook is increased.

Why don't I take the first part of that and then I think Per is probably going to take the second part on the outlook for FRAs. Dave, we're not really talking about second half and guidance, but I can tell you what the impact in the first half was and it was nearly a £10 million impact on EBITDA to us.

We've been public about £46 million impact of duty changes. We think £10 million of that came through the Italy duty change.

Per, do you want to comment on the FRAs?

Yes, I can comment on that. The Gambling Commission has announced the implementation of FRAs and it has recently made that announcement.

It's going to be implemented through a staged process, which we do expect to be kicked off in the immediate short term. What the Commission has initiated, which very much are welcoming, is that it's creating implementation groups in order to engage operators like ourselves.

We will obviously take an active part in working together with the Gambling Commission to make sure that, whatever is coming out of the FRAs, it is proportionate, and also it is fit for purpose and future-proof from operational performance, and likewise is not going to have a detrimental impact from a customer experience and likewise the regulated market. We will take part in the development of FRAs in the UK market.

It will happen, and we are getting ready to introduce that.

the place to look for run-rate savings on store closures is you can see that, much as our revenue has dropped, our EBITDA in retail has improved by 5%. That's the way that we think about it.

What we've done is we've cut out loss-making stores, and that's meant that we're more profitable in spite of having lower revenue. The other point here is we have seen very strong like-for-like.

If you forget the stores or ring-fence out the stores that we've shut, the like-for-like in the more profitable stores has been really strong. We've seen 4% like-for-like in retail, and that's significantly above the market.

We're pleased with that. Working capital, yeah, positive working capital for the first half, which, again, we're pleased with compared to last year.

We're not giving forward guidance on cash flow, the one thing I would say, though, of course, is that your quarterly duty payments are paid quarterly in arrears. That increase in the quarterly payment in Q4 is going to be paid in Q1 following year.

I would absolutely expect to see a good positive working capital number. LTM revenue in Spain and Romania is not really a level of detail I want to get into today.

The next one was adjusted EBITDA. We covered that one, Josh.

You about to read that one out? You go for it.

I'll ask the next question.

Let me start with that one, Sean, and then you can chip in. As we called out before, we do see mixed performance when it comes to international markets, but very, very satisfied with what we see in the core markets of Italy and Denmark.

As we called out, there is some weakness in Spain and Romania, and we do have plans to address that. When it comes to Spain in particular, and Sean called that out as part of the presentation is that we have some product issues related to the sports side.

That said, since the beginning of the year, we have scaled up the investment behind our products, both sports and gaming, in Spain, and we have seen good response from a customer's perspective when it comes to the new William Hill app that we have launched. It's further improvements to come on the product proposition when it comes to Spain for the year to go.

We have, in fact, moved some resources from the UK in order to further scale up and accelerate the product and tech roadmap for Spain. We also have implemented in H1 related to Spain in terms of marketing improvements, including also customer lifecycle management improvements, which is yet to be seen coming into effect.

We expect that to happen in H2. In terms of Romania, we do see that this is an overall weak market and in particular hit by the increased taxation.

We are absolutely focused on making sure that we are preserving the cash and liquidity in all the markets, including Romania. That is what we continue to do by, of course, continue focus on the product and the customer proposition to the customer.

In terms of rest of the world, I think the key message here is that we are absolutely focused on when it comes to profitable growth and when it comes to cash flow preservation. We'd rather then invest in the markets where we have a higher return on investment.

So... I can go.

Thank you. We are not giving any specific financial figures related to World Cup, but Sean called it out, and we called it out in the presentation that we are really pleased with the operational and the commercial execution of what we delivered to the customer during the World Cup.

By the way, fantastic tournament, I must say. We have seen an customer engagement that was overperforming versus the expectations we set out before the tournament started, and that also follows an overperformance when it comes to revenue projections.

What we did see also was that when it comes to group stage results, which is, of course, part of the H1 results we call out today, the results were a bit more customer-friendly in June, while we saw that during the knockout stages, it was a bit more operator-friendly, obviously less games. Overall, very, very happy with the performance by the team delivering great customer experience to the customers during the World Cup.

As we said, we are not giving any financial forward-looking outline, but what we can say, we are performing according back to expectations when it comes to where we stand today.

Two thirds of it was from the UK, UK was £30 million of that £46 million. I've already told you that Italy was circa 10, which means, yeah, rest is really from Romania.

In terms of it being close to estimates, I think we were pretty well spot on. It's not an enormously difficult thing to work out, our estimates were pretty well bang on there.

The other thing that's just worth saying when you're thinking about this, clearly, the UK only had one additional quarter within the half of increased duty.

Thank you so much. To close then, the first half demonstrated the resilience of evoke in a materially more challenging operating environment.

Despite significant increases in gaming duties, particularly in the UK, we acted decisively, maintained operational momentum, and delivered like-for-like revenue growth and protected profitability and cash generation. Following the board strategic review, we believe the recommended acquisition by Bally's Interactive represents the most attractive and deliverable outcome for shareholders.

This while providing the business with a stronger long-term capital structure. Until completion, let's be clear, our focus remains unchanged: serving our customers, supporting our colleagues, and executing with discipline, and continue to generate strong cash flow.

I would like to thank you all for your time today and for your questions today. Have a good day.