Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Grafton Group plc half year results.

Quick agenda, I will start with some operational highlights before our CFO David Arnold will go through the financial details, and afterwards you will have me again talking a little bit about strategy and outlook for the remainder of the year. The performance in the first half was, I would call, very solid.

We had revenue growth of 6.7%, adjusted operating profit increase of 8.2%, and a growth of our adjusted earnings per share of 10.8%. As you will have noted this morning, we increased the interim dividend by 2.3% and reconfirm our full year operating profit guidance between £190 and £200 million.

In terms of development activities in the first half of the year, we completed two acquisitions in Europe's faster-growing markets: in Ireland where we acquired Signum, and in Iberia, in Spain, where we acquired Mercaluz. Both of those acquisitions have started well in our ownership and are trading strongly year to date.

We also invested into new branches on a group-wide basis, especially in Iberia and also in Ireland. We maintain a strong balance sheet to have sufficient firepower to deploy capital as the opportunities arise.

I will now hand over to David to go through the financials.

Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. As Eric has already covered some of the key financial KPIs from our first half performance, I'll now dive straight into the income statement in a bit more detail.

Revenue of £1.34 billion was 6.7% higher than last year. Strong execution across the group enabled us to deliver a resilient adjusted operating margin before property profits of 7.4%, up 10 basis points year on year, despite ongoing competitive pressures in several of our markets.

This reflects a continued focus on margin management across the group and proactively addressing our cost base to mitigate the ongoing inflationary environment on operating costs. We've seen no material disruption from developments in the Middle East as we continue to manage supply chain risks proactively, maintaining strong product availability, while effective supplier engagement and pricing actions have helped protect margins.

It's pleasing to report that we saw strong profit growth in the first half with the group's adjusted operating profit of £98.5 million, up 8.2% compared to prior year. Net finance costs were £5.5 million, £1.4 million higher than last year, largely due to reduced interest income on our cash deposits and lower cash balances following the acquisitions and share buybacks that was partly offset by favorable foreign exchange movements.

In the full year, we currently expect a finance charge of £15 to £16 million. The effective tax rate was 19.8%, 30 basis points higher than last year and is our assumed rate for the full year.

This slightly higher rate reflects the increasing contribution from Spain where the corporate tax rate is 25%. We're pleased to report an increase in adjusted earnings per share of 10.8% to 39.4 pence, which is consistent with our targets set out in our recent capital markets event and reflects the impact of operational improvements, organic growth, and capital deployment into acquisitions and share buybacks.

Looking at the first half revenue increase to £1.3 billion, we delivered an increase of £8 million in organic revenue, and I'll cover that in more detail on the next slide. Acquisitions were the main driver of sales growth in the first half, contributing £56 million of incremental revenue.

This reflected the inclusion of the seasonally important May and June trading period at Mercaluz, a full second quarter of trading from Signum, and the incremental contribution from HSS Hire Ireland, which was acquired at the end of March 2025. The divestment of the small MFP plastic pipe business in the Republic of Ireland at the end of May 2025 reduced revenue by £3 million.

Finally, the strengthening of the euro against sterling accounted for an exchange gain of £23 million in the first half. This slide analyzes the net increase of £8 million in organic revenue.

In general, I would note that we saw an uptick in product price inflation in the second quarter as pricing actions implemented in response to the conflict in the Middle East flowed through to the P&L. Our diversified portfolio supported a resilient first half as strong performances in the island of Ireland and Iberia more than offset the decline in Great Britain.

The island of Ireland segment delivered organic revenue growth of £19 million, largely attributable to a strong performance in Chadwicks. Against a backdrop of persistently challenging market conditions throughout the first half, organic revenue in Great Britain declined by £19 million year on year.

Revenue in Northern Europe increased by £2 million on a like-for-like basis, driven largely by an improved performance in Finland. Organic growth of £6 million in Iberia was driven by Salvador Escoda only, since Mercaluz was acquired in the first half.

The Salvador Escoda performance reflected its continuing positive growth trajectory since we first entered the Spanish market. Finally, branch openings and closures had a small negative impact on revenue, and that will reverse in the full year.

Turning to the movement in adjusted operating profit, I'll look at the performance of the like-for-like business in a moment. The major component of the increase in group operating profit to £98.5 million was the £10.4 million of profit attributable to acquisitions led by Mercaluz with £6.5 million.

Looking at the £4 million reduction in adjusted operating profit in our like-for-like business, you can see that all operating segments except Great Britain reported an increase in adjusted operating profit. Disappointingly, the profit growth we achieved in Great Britain during 2025 was not sustained into the first half of 2026 with UK private RMI and new build markets both weakening further, and all our business units exposed to the UK reporting lower profits year on year.

Moving on to look at each segment now in a little bit more detail. Once again, we saw a good performance from our island of Ireland segment in the first half.

Revenue of £579.4 million increased by 7.5% on a constant currency basis. Like-for-like revenue grew by 3.4% in the first half, led by strong trading in Chadwicks and modest growth in Woodie's against tough comparators.

After a relatively slow start to the year, trading strengthened during the second quarter as construction activity increased and the weather improved markedly. Our businesses on the island of Ireland delivered strong profit growth in the first half with adjusted operating profit of £60.6 million, up 7.3% on a constant currency basis.

This performance was underpinned by a strong performance in underlying trading in Chadwicks in addition to the incremental contributions from the HSS Hire Ireland and Signum acquisitions. Trading in MacBlair in Northern Ireland followed a similar pattern to our GB segment with the overall environment remaining challenging.

The integration of Signum is well on track, and we've been pleased with the business's performance since its acquisition on the 31st of March. First half sales increased by 18.3% on a pro forma basis compared with the prior year, driven by additional production capacity that was brought on stream shortly before the acquisition completed.

Signum enhances our exposure to the growing Irish new build housing market, and Eric will speak in a little bit more detail about the strategic rationale for the acquisition a little later. We continue to strengthen our market-leading position on the island of Ireland.

This included the opening of a new Woodie's store in Ennis, County Clare in June and a new Chadwicks specialist hub in Ravenhill, Belfast in July. Bringing together the Panelling Centre and Sitetech in a single location, the hub demonstrates the Grafton Way in practice, showcasing how our businesses work together across the island of Ireland to improve our proposition for customers.

Moving next to Great Britain, it's fair to say that we were disappointed with the first half results after positive progress last year. Market conditions remain very challenging with new build housing activity and discretionary home improvement projects constrained by affordability pressures and weak consumer and business confidence levels.

Revenue in Great Britain was £367.2 million in the first half, down 5.1% year on year with average daily like-for-like revenue declining by the same amount. All our GB businesses reported declines in like-for-like revenue during the period.

Despite lower market volumes and continued competitive pressure, we were pleased to deliver a slight improvement in gross margin in the first half, and this reflects the strong execution of our teams and disciplined pricing across our businesses. Notwithstanding inflationary pressure on costs, especially with respect to labor and property, overheads were tightly controlled with the increase in like-for-like overheads contained to approximately 1%, well below general inflation levels.

Nevertheless, despite tight cost control, adjusted operating profit of £17.5 million declined by almost 30% as lower volumes weighed on operating leverage. In Northern Europe, market conditions remain subdued in the Netherlands where the expected recovery has been slower to materialize, resulting in slightly lower volumes compared to prior year.

In contrast, Finland showed more encouraging signs of early recovery, supported by improving consumer spending, exports, and business investment. Revenue of £244.2 million increased by 0.7% on a constant currency basis.

Average daily like-for-like sales grew by 0.8% in the first half, driven primarily by growth in Finland where an improvement in trading conditions and targeted management actions supported trading. Adjusted operating profit increased to £16.3 million in the first half with the adjusted operating profit margin unchanged at 6.7%.

Higher profitability in Finland more than offset a modest reduction in profits in the Netherlands. We continue to make good progress in the Netherlands in the execution of their multi-year improvement program.

A key milestone was achieved in the period with our end-to-end purchasing and finance processes now successfully operating on their new ERP platform. We continue to be very encouraged by the performances of our businesses in Iberia and the broader opportunities in this market.

Revenue of £145.1 million increased by 35.5% on a constant currency basis. Average daily like-for-like sales grew by 6.6% in Salvador Escoda, supported by strong market demand and record first half temperatures in Spain with robust commercial execution across its air conditioning, refrigeration, and ventilation product categories.

A key highlight during the period was the completion of our second acquisition in Iberia, Mercaluz, at the end of April. Like Salvador Escoda, it's primarily serving the professional HVAC installer market and represents another important step in strengthening our position in the region.

We've been pleased with the integration process to date and very encouraged by its early trading performance with average daily like-for-like sales up 6.7% on a pro forma basis across May and June, and Eric will discuss Mercaluz in more detail shortly. Our Iberia segment delivered an adjusted operating profit of £14.1 million, representing an adjusted operating profit margin of 9.7%.

The strong year-on-year increase on both profits and margin was largely attributable to Mercaluz, which joined the group just before the start of two of its most important seasonal trading months. Grafton continues to support local management teams in driving organic growth.

Salvador Escoda opened five branches in the first half, and Mercaluz opened a further branch following completion of its acquisition. Having successfully supported Salvador Escoda's accelerated expansion plans following integration, we expect to provide similar support to Mercaluz.

We continue to assess further growth opportunities in the attractive Iberian market with a strong pipeline of both organic and inorganic development. Now this slide analyzes our cash flow in the first half.

As you can see, the group generated £70.7 million in free cash flow, and that represents a 72% conversion of adjusted operating profit into cash, building upon the group's strong cash flow generation credentials. Working capital management remains a key focus for the group, and we invested £22 million in net working capital during the first half, reflecting product price inflation and inventory actions taken in response to developments in the Middle East.

We've always said that we believe it is essential to continue to reinvest into our businesses to maintain their competitive edge, even during times of market weakness, and we invested a net £23 million into replacement and development capex in the first half. Where do we use that free cash flow and that strength of our balance sheet?

The major element went into acquisitions, but we also returned a net £75.5 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. You will have seen from today's results announcement that we propose to increase the interim dividend by 2% to 11 pence per share, and consistent with the targets which we set out at our Capital Markets Event, it remains our intention to restore dividend cover more firmly within the 2 to 3 times dividend cover range as we move forward.

Share buybacks of £25.6 million were executed in the first half out of a total figure announced in the current year of £50 million. Grafton's cash-generative nature, together with its strong balance sheet, continues to support both shareholder returns and provides significant firepower for the group to capitalize on organic and inorganic development opportunities.

At the end of June, our net debt was £315 million, representing lease-adjusted net debt to EBITDA of just under 1 times. Turning to the balance sheet, a key point to note is that the acquisitions accounted for £34 million of the £53 million increase in net working capital since the end of 2025.

Adjusted return on capital employed was 10.7% in the first half, that was down 20 basis points on last year, and that's very much a function of our recent capital deployment into acquisitions. This level of return on capital employed is still around 2 percentage points higher than our estimated weighted average cost of capital.

Capital turn was constant at 1.4 times. Finally, just to note before I hand back to Eric, I have included some technical guidance for the full year, which you may find helpful in the appendices.

Eric.

Thank you, David. A few words about strategy and outlook.

I will share a few slides which I went through in detail at our very recent Capital Markets Event, I will not dwell on them. The strategy remains unchanged.

We provide our trade customers in Europe with construction-related products and solutions. That's what we do.

We drive growth through long-term organic growth in markets where there are underlying structural growth drivers, and supplement that via acquisitions, and execute all of that in our federated operating model where we combine the best of two worlds, which means good controls, processes, best practice, and technology through the group whilst having local accountability in execution and customer proximity. All of that is what we call the Grafton Way.

To talk about the long-term growth drivers, here is how we select markets, again a slide from the Capital Markets Event. We select regions and countries which have underlying structural growth drivers.

We are well aware this is a cyclical industry, but in the long run, we select markets where the growth drivers are there. In each market, we look at which verticals do we believe we can deliver the returns, the profitability, drive consolidation and growth, and enhance the businesses through our shared knowledge across the group, exactly what we do in Spain.

The outcome of that is that in every single market where we operate in, we have strong management teams running differentiated models with trusted local brands. We have local scale and the necessary customer centricity, which allows us to deliver above industry-average returns, rocking cash generation throughout the cycle.

Our federated operating model, again just a little illustration. The outcome is really, the most important thing is on the bottom of the slide: agile, customer-focused businesses, empowered and engaged colleagues delivering the returns we expect.

From a structural point of view, as a group, we have the structures in place to make sure that best practices are leveraged, IT solutions are leveraged, procurement benefits are taken where it makes sense, and the capital allocation is stringent controlled by the group. That's a model which has worked very well for us over time as we continue to execute.

David mentioned briefly Mercaluz. Mercaluz is a Spanish company, leader in HVAC, predominantly air conditioning.

Very very complementary to Salvador Escoda. It's a different model.

Salvador Escoda offers 40,000-plus SKUs: AC, ventilation, refrigeration, a one-stop shop for the installer with branches and a network of branches. Mercaluz has, their branches are like small distribution centers.

They deliver to the installers, they have a narrow range, about 8,000 SKUs, very much focused on the own brand, which is Johnson, Johnson Air Conditioning, and other products, 75% of the sales are own-branded products, hence the very very strong margin which can be achieved. There is a rapid expansion underway.

We have now 20 locations in Spain. Nine locations were opened in the last 18 months whilst we were in contact with them and talked about acquiring the business.

Integration progressing really really well. The local management team remains in place, the two former owners continue to run the business with all the appropriate incentive structures you would expect so that our incentives are aligned to successfully continue to grow the business and have the next phase of accelerated growth in a strong market.

Our other acquisition was Signum in the Republic of Ireland, a leading supplier of made-to-order off-site timber frame solutions. That's a product expansion for Chadwicks.

It's a business where is our first MMC business or modern methods of construction. This is a growing element, especially in scheme housing, low-rise scheme housing, where in the first half, 66% of new scheme housing commencements had timber frames.

We have synergies with Chadwicks in two ways. One, we are the largest buyer with Chadwicks Group of materials like insulation and so on and timber, which is needed to do those timber frames.

There is a product, a procurement synergy, but also, in addition to the customers which Signum already has, there is now access to the customers which Chadwicks has to provide the timber frame solutions. Again, integration progressed very well, and trading is in line with where we expected it to be.

At the Capital Markets Event, we were clear about our ambition of £850 million-plus free cash flow cumulatively until the end of 2030, an EPS CAGR greater than 10%, and in normalized markets, a ROCE which is 13% or more by 2030. We are tracking well to achieve that.

We had a free cash flow in the first half, as David mentioned, of just shy of £71 million, an adjusted EPS growth just shy of 11%, and a ROCE of 10.7%. That with two markets which are not at all pumping on all cylinders, namely Northern Europe and in particular GB.

Which nicely brings me to the current trading and the average daily like-for-like sales. As you could see in the first half, but also in the most recent weeks up until the 23rd of August, the island of Ireland performing well and strong, and the same can be said for Iberia, our two strong growing markets; Northern Europe with a little bit of growth, but not fantastic; and still a challenge in GB, which is, in my eyes, significant upside potential once we can have the positive effect of the operating leverage which we have in our GB businesses.

In terms of H2 outlook, we have a positive Republic of Ireland construction outlook for the second half, we expect to continue to perform strongly in the Republic of Ireland. In terms of Northern Ireland with our MacBlair business, we expect no significant uplift in the second half, as from a macro point of view, this is more aligned to our GB businesses.

In Great Britain, we expect the second half market conditions to remain unchanged compared to the first half. We expect it to continue to be challenging, and of course, the autumn budget will be key in shaping consumer confidence going forward.

We will see what the outcome will be. In terms of Northern Europe, the Dutch market conditions are expected to be similar to the first half, and in Finland, we expect that the gradual recovery which has started will continue in the second half of the year.

In Spain, we expect continuous strong growth as Spain remains one of the fastest-growing large economies in Europe. In summary, a resilient performance in the first half.

The acquisitions are performing well, are in line with our expectation. Integration is going well.

That's always important that the teams gel with the teams we already have. That is all going well.

We continue to execute our strategy, drive long-term organic growth, supplemented with value-enhancing acquisitions, and we reaffirm full year guidance for the operating profit for the full year and remain on track to deliver our 2030 targets. Any questions?

Excellent. Just on the questions front, we have some microphones that will come around.

If for the benefit of the tape you could state your name and your rank and serial number, that would be great. I certainly have a selective memory, if you ask me too many questions at once, I'll select not to answer them.

If you could do them one at a time and I give you the answer, that would be even better. We'll start with Will, you have the mic.

Thank you. Will Jones, Rothschild & Co Redburn.

A couple, please. The first, around pricing, perhaps you could just walk us through how that's evolved in the top line as we've gone from, say, Q1 through to the early part of Q3, and maybe within that, just how commodities are faring relative to normal finished products?

Yeah. Actually the year started from an inflationary perspective in a very benign way.

If I was to look across the group, Q1 inflation was very modest indeed, pretty flat actually. Then we started to see it pick up as we got towards the end of the second quarter.

I would say across the businesses, the more material impacts have been around the heavy building products in GB and in Ireland. If you look at the Spanish businesses, indeed if you were to look at Woodie's, a lot of the products which they are buying in, they would have bought in some way in advance.

They haven't really been as impacted by product price inflation at this point. That's more likely to be a feature as we move into 2027 for those businesses in particular.

If you look at the likes of Chadwicks and the GB distribution businesses, I think what we saw was inflation in the second quarter, we were more in the 3 to 4% camp, and as we exited, I would say we were more around that 4%. Now the huge amount of volatility, as we know, in markets more generally.

What is the outlook for the second half? I think probably on the heavy building materials side, probably is closer to the 4%, I would say, than the 3%.

I think that's where the bigger pressure that we see comes through. For those other businesses, I think it's about next year, and next year we're probably likely to see a higher rate of inflation for those businesses than we saw this year where it's been running at sort of that 1 to 2% level.

Whether there's anything to note in timber and steel, where it's relevant?

I wouldn't say there's anything particular to pull out there. Steel has been relatively volatile, and of course, we have to concern ourselves with things like CBAM as well these days and the impact of that.

Second was just maybe unpicking some of the moving parts around gross margin, firstly whether there's been any kind of one-off assistance from that sequential price inflation through recent months, and then maybe just exploring where you're seeing the competitive tension and any of those self-help levers that place in that you called out one, for example, but anything to explore on gross margin?

If I sort of pick up the gross margin and then perhaps Eric picks up sort of competitive elements around the market and self-help. On gross margin, I would say no, there's no sort of specific one-off elements of that.

It's just a function of an awful lot of work that we've been doing at a branch level in terms of pricing, in terms of being quick to pass through any of the extra price increases that we've got, a lot of work around selective promotional activity. I think continuing that theme that we had and talked about last year really, which in GB, in a GB context, which is we saw no benefit in being very aggressive on price because we just didn't see that the market would give the volume uplift to compensate for that.

I think we continue to be quite tactical, we'll be very responsive. GB had a good performance on gross margin as we talked about in the first half.

Overall for the group, we were pleased with where the gross margin landed. I think

in terms of competitive environment, in each market it is as you would expect given the circumstances of the market. The toughest market, I would say at the moment, is GB where volumes are really low, and with low volumes, you will have the same amount of players fighting for lower volumes, which normally gives extra competitive pressure.

As David said, we are not really driving the businesses per se on gaining market share and achieving less gross profit than maintaining market share and achieving more gross profit, right? We work closely with the businesses in each market, but we certainly have no irrational competitive behavior in any of the markets.

Close to Shane. Hi, it's

Shane Carberry, Goodbody. The first one, just a follow-up maybe on Signum and given how constructive the new build background is in Ireland probably right out to 2030, just trying to get an idea of where you think that business could go over the medium term and when we think about its scaling from here, is it additional manufacturing facilities, I know it's just been ramped up from a manufacturing perspective, or is it plugging into the Chadwicks model, just how we should think about the growth from here over the medium term?

In the medium term, I would say we have sufficient capacity in the existing setup after the capacity expansion to significantly grow the business, right? Of course, if the business will grow successfully and at some stage we need to expand capacity, well, that's what we will do, right?

Like in any of the businesses. In the medium term, we certainly have no capacity constrain to significantly grow the business over time.

Then

the second one, I guess was just around the 2030 targets and the EPS target. Already you're coming in slightly ahead of at circa 11% relative to the 10% CAGR.

What does that do for your confidence level when you think about the fact that some of the markets, as you mentioned, are quite subdued within that mix and might have been easy to think some of that CAGR would have been back-end weighted maybe?

Look, I joined this industry in 2022, and at that time, there were lots of our earnings coming out of GB, right? When I joined, I did not foresee that GB will kind of do what it will do, and I always tease David who has spent a lifetime in the industry telling me, "Second half next year, the recovery will start," right?

It hasn't yet happened. My point is, you don't really know 5 years out what is happening.

We certainly had a good start, and if all the markets in a perfect world, let's say Ireland continues until 2030 to be strong, does Iberia, we achieve the ambition to get a billion in Iberia at the 7 to 10% operating margin, and Northern Europe plus GB recover, happy day. I feel very confident.

What I don't know is do we have some other markets which has a slowdown in 2028, 2029, right? I think you can only deal with it as you go along.

Overall, as we explained in the Capital Markets Day, I think we have the levers necessary in our hands to achieve those targets. I'm pretty confident we will get there, but I'm not overconfident because I don't have a magic wand to read the future, we just have to be cautious and react to what happens.

Sorry, floor. I think it's just got the mic.

Thank you.

A couple from me, Flor O'Donoghue from Davy. First one I might ask is in relation to Salvador Escoda, just the network expansion.

You just might give us a bit more color on the five new branches, where they are, is it geographic gaps, just broad economics around how it works in terms of opening costs, the kind of pathway to maturity, and those kind of things, if that's okay?

Sure. It's filling openings, right?

Where we have still wide gaps where we think we will be able to open. It's across Spain where we opened, and also on the Balearic Islands.

We have a plan to open seven this year, five were done in the first half, two more to come in line with our business plan. Opening a Salvador Escoda branch is not expensive.

They are not massive branches. It's not like a Selco where you put quite a lot of capital down.

It's a relatively modest investment, and we would normally expect the business to certainly contribute after 12 months to the bottom line. It's sometimes earlier, right?

It's a relatively fast breakeven, and you have relatively short lease commitments as well. You take a 5-year lease, lease costs are relatively low, and so if it wouldn't work, you can exit relatively painless, and if it does work, it normally moves into, an extension of leases is pretty simple or it moves into evergreen contracts.

It's slightly different to the Mercaluz model. A new Mercaluz branch tends to be a slightly higher investment because it tends to act as a distribution hub, you need a sort of slightly bigger warehouse than you would with a Salvador branch.

Okay.

Thank you. Second one then just might turn to GB.

Really feels like you've done everything you can in operating costs and trying to keep the businesses tight and as lean as possible. Is there any talk around maybe as leases come up in the likes of Selco that you may look at kind of consolidating the estate a bit, or will you just kind of have to hang tough till the market turns?

It's a constant process where we look at each branch. Does the branch contribute?

Does it contribute to overhead if it's not otherwise in the best shape? We look at this very very actively, and if it makes economic sense to consolidate, we'll consolidate.

If it makes economic sense to continue to trade, we'll continue to trade. I think we closed one in the last 18 months, right?

We went from 75 to 74, and we will keep monitoring it. Now in the long run, we still believe that there is potential for up to 90 Selcos in GB.

We believe it's a very good model, but it's a model with a lot of operating leverage. At that moment in the cycle, operating leverage isn't great, right?

When the cycle turns, operating leverage is great. That's how it works, right?

If it makes economic sense to exit some sites, we will, but you have to look at it on a site-by-site basis. How does it contribute now?

Do we think how much more revenue do you actually need for the site to be a really good contributor again? You have to look at it in the as the overall picture of each site.

Just to add to that, I think Frank Elkins covered some of this at the Capital Markets Event. We've got a new centralized distribution center that will be coming on stream in next year, so that's an important investment.

Now, inevitably there will be an element of some double running costs for a period, but once that is operating on its own, that's a big efficiency gain for Selco as well. It gives them more capacity for doing some more own brand sourcing and that sort of thing.

That's quite an exciting efficiency improvement that by the time we get sort of '28, '29, that will be in full stream.

As you can see, we are committed to GB in the long term, and I can only stress and reinvest throughout the cycle. It would be easy to say, "No, we don't put a new DC down for Selco."

Actually, it's the right thing, and GB will return. It's not a question if, it's a question when.

Good. I think it's second half of next year.

Keep telling me, David.

Christen.

Thank you. Christen Hjorth from Deutsche Bank.

Just to start with the first one, probably for David, the Mercaluz margin looked very good in the first half. You did point out that was a couple of good months for them, but just to get a sense of that versus normalized, it's a big pick-up versus what they generated last year, for example.

Yeah. Look, I think the result in the first half, if you were to just look at the Mercaluz's contribution to the group, the operating margin was super-normal because it had those two months in it.

Ordinarily we'd expect their margin to be sort of mid-teens. It was stronger than that, as I say, in the first half.

Looking sort of further forward, if you just take the Salvador and take the Mercaluz business, we'd expect in a sort of normalized to be that sort of 9 to 10%. When we think about our broader ambitions for Iberia again, which we talked about at the Capital Markets Event, we want to get to a billion euros of revenue, that's our target.

The sort of zone, if you like, for the operating margin that we see for a mature business in different business streams would probably be more in that 7 to 10% margin.

The second one, obviously, sticking with Spain, clearly a bit of a benefit, I imagine, from the heatwaves that we've had across Europe. Just your sense whether that drives brought-forward demand or actually triggers a structural change in the demand for air conditioning, and therefore, you can see good sales even as the weather gets cooler because people realize they need to have air conditioning in the summer months?

Look, you already have a strong AC penetration in countries like Spain, right? Many of the houses have already AC.

I do think that the penetration of AC will continue to increase, and of course, if summer months are particularly hot, the AC systems have to work harder, it might shorten their lifespan, therefore, you will sell more AC units over time. I think all those fundamentals, if you want, are reasons why we've invested into that particular product segment in Iberia and believe there is, among other segments, still a lot of stuff to do and to consolidate that particular market.

I expect the heat to be an ongoing feature. As we've seen in London this summer, it was pretty hot here, and I'm sure many of you who don't have air conditioning in the house thought about maybe next year I should buy some air conditioning, right?

Right. Thank you.

Alastair Stewart from Progressive Equity Research. A couple of questions, the first one in the UK and going on to second halves again.

It's probably a bit unfair to get granularity on 8 weeks of latest trading, but it's down 5.6% versus 4.9% for the second quarter and 5.2% for Q1. What's the sort of direction of travel in that latest 5.6%?

Do you get the sense it's getting better, worse, or no change? You mentioned the autumn budget, but I get the sense this time round there's far less speculation than in the two or three months before the last budget, which really did slow down the market.

Maybe a bit of color on what your customers are actually saying, that's the first question.

Just on what are we seeing? Look, I think if I can describe it, I think we're bumbling along a bit.

I think week to week, I wouldn't say we have a good week, we just don't have a really bad week. I think the feature that we saw in May and June and July though in particular was new build.

We saw that in CPI, Euromix. We saw the volume that was being drawn off on sites was down quite significantly.

I think that as we went through the first half, that was the thing that really emerged. We started off with new build was flat, and then it really came off.

Now look, I wouldn't say it's getting worse, I just think it's bumbling along where it is. Now you're right in terms of that speculation that we had.

Last year, crikey, it was horrendously attritional in terms of all the kites flying that was out, but we're not seeing that to the same extent yet. Let's hope that we don't see it.

I think the ramifications for the sort of Q4 and into Q1 next year is really what happens in that budget. Do we see another tax-raising exercise?

If we do, then I don't think that will be particularly good for confidence more generally, but that was the context in which we made that comment.

Second question, probably quicker. Timber frame, 66% penetration in Ireland, just out of interest, where's that come from 5 years ago, 3 years?

How much has timber frame rallied in Ireland? Because I haven't a clue.

No, that's been quite strong growth over the last decade, but still sits beneath the level of timber frame in Scotland or in Scandinavia where it would be probably closer to 90% of timber frame. We still see further opportunity in Ireland for that to grow from a penetration perspective.

Sorry, Charlie.

Charlie Campbell with Stifel. A couple of questions.

The first one, it's really around the drop-through, and I suppose if you look at the results and you put GB to one side, and you do the exercise of the drop-through for the other countries, it's maybe not as much as we might have thought. Do you just wonder what the offset is there because, you've talked about gross margin obviously kind of picking up in all those areas and disciplined on overheads, I guess there's some investment going in the other size, just to understand what that is really.

You probably have to look at it geographically really in terms of that drop-through. If we look at island of Ireland, the thing to bear in mind is, there is also an element around MacBlair in there, which has its exposure to the UK.

If we look at the businesses in the Republic of Ireland, we were pleased with the level of drop-through that we saw. The common theme across all the geographies that has impact to the pound around drop-through is really around labor inflation and property costs.

If we look at our overhead base, 75% of our overhead base is drawn from people and property. Property, I would say, is still suffering that tail of the inflationary impact that we've seen that's coming through in rent, so that's sort of still coming through.

People is very heavily influenced across many of our businesses, either by if I take the Netherlands, collective labor agreement, collective labor agreement for 2026 is up a little under 4%. If I look at minimum wage levels in Ireland or in GB, that's where the pressure is coming.

That's the thing that we're having to work really hard from an operational efficiency to try to offset. If we look at Iberia, then what we have been doing in Iberia is we have been investing in the business.

If I look at my like-for-like overheads in Iberia, that's up somewhere around about 5%, but some of that is really because we've been investing in that business for the future. We've been putting those new branches in, which is why that drop-through doesn't look as strong as ordinarily we would expect given that level of revenue, but, yeah, we're all over that one.

The

second question at the risk of being too optimistic. The drop-through in the UK if and as and when this recovery comes through, ought we to be thinking at least the gross margin because one would have thought there's really not much overhead to go in for quite some time, is that the right way to think about that?

I would love to aspire to a drop-through rate that came in at the gross margin. I think that's a bit bullish because I think inevitably, there's other stuff that comes along.

Typically in a recovery, and it does depend upon the pace and the speed at which volumes come back, but typically, you'd be looking at 15 to 20% would be a reasonable level of drop-through, I would have said. I would love it to be coming through at the gross margin.

The real kicker in drop-through is if you can combine that volume uptick with some improvement in gross margin, and then it becomes a bit adrenaline-fueled, and then you will see much stronger levels of drop-through.

One day. Thank you.

Oh, Sam. Next.

Hi. Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt.

Just going back to that 75% number on property and labor costs, sort of the question du jour currently is what are you doing or exploring in terms of AI to take some of that labor cost out, or be more efficient across the business, particularly with the centralized model in Ireland?

Yeah. Look, we're doing a lot of work generally across the sort of centralized functions, but it's not just about productivity, but it's also about quality as well in terms of the output.

That's where the principle focus is because a lot of that labor cost is people serving people in branches. It's moving product, putting product on shelves, helping customers.

That's where the major element around labor expenditure sits. The AI level, we're using across all elements, whether it's recruitment or whether it's marketing and whether it's product descriptions.

Where it will help is comes back I think probably to Charlie's point around drop-through is that it will just enable us to be more efficient and benefit then when we see volume uptick without having to put additional resources in.

Thanks.

Ben.

Thanks. Ben Pfannes-Varrow, RBC.

One on Iberia. With the target of the 1 billion, can you just remind us how we should think about organic growth sort of as we head into next year and to that target out to 2030?

Look, I do this mental maths by Eric, right? I guess on an annualized run rate with the businesses we have, we should be somewhere around €430, €450 million in revenue.

I would expect them to organically grow to 600-plus by 2030. We need to acquire and grow around 400 to get to a billion.

Right? That's really how I look at it.

We have a pipeline which would facilitate that. As we keep saying, we don't buy a business for the sake of buying a business if we don't think the valuation is right or there is something which we don't think after looking at the business closely that it will give us what we really expected it to be.

The pipeline is there to facilitate that. I'm confident that we will get there, but I think I just want to reiterate the 1 billion is a target.

If we end up at €850 million and 9% operating profit, I wouldn't look at it as failure, right? I would still be content with that.

If everything goes great, we might end up above a billion, who knows, right? You really have to think about, okay, it should be more than €600 million purely organically with the business we already have, and then add another few hundred million which we then keep growing to that portfolio.

Of course, the earlier between now and 2030 will be able to add those businesses in, the more confident to get to a billion. In the end, we want to have quality businesses which we buy at the right time for the right valuation, rather than businesses we overpay just for the sake of having them early in our portfolio.

Okay. Jaime at the back.

Morning, guys. Jaime Morris from Bank of America.

Just on free cash flow, why did that fall by about 10%? I think you mentioned cash conversion fell a little bit, but if you could just provide a little bit of color around why that happened, and also how you see that going forwards into H2.

Thank you.

Yeah. Look, the cash conversion dropped a little bit compared to last year because last year actually we released capital from working capital.

This year, we invested into working capital, which is where that was an incremental drag. Ordinarily you have to bear in mind, if we think about our operating profit, how we characterize our free cash conversion, it's after we've paid tax, typically 20% tax rate in round terms, so that's got to come off, and after we pay finance charges as well.

Actually something in the range of 70 to 80% would be a reasonable level and an expectation level. We've had some really strong performances.

I think we can continue to do good work around working capital, but the most important thing for us is to make sure that we've got the products available for customers. When we end up with a bit of conflict in the Middle East, then a bit more investment into working capital is the sound thing to do.

That looks like it. We've got no questions on the line.

I think that draws to a conclusion the proceedings. Thank you very much for coming, good to see everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you all.