Thank you, Madalena. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on another warm day in London.

I'm Kean Marden, Head of Investor Relations and M&A, and I'm joined here today by James Hilton, Chief Financial Officer, to present Hays' Q4 '26 results. Before we begin, please be aware that this call is being recorded, and the replay is accessible using the number and code provided in the release.

Please be aware that our discussions may contain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations or beliefs, as well as assumptions on future events. There are risk factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements.

Hays disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements that have been made during this call, regardless of whether these statements are affected by new information, future events, or otherwise. I'll now hand you over to James.

Thank you, Kean. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today.

I'll present the key points and regional details of today's trading update before taking questions. As usual, all net fee growth percentages are on a like-for-like basis versus prior year unless stated otherwise, and consequently exclude our previously communicated exits from operations in four countries, and our divestment of the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Luxembourg, Romania, and Sweden.

Group net fees decreased by 5%, with Temp and Contracting down 3%, and Perm down 7%. I'm pleased to confirm that our decisive action has improved our financial performance, and we currently expect FY26 pre-exceptional operating profit will be at the top of the consensus range, following a strong return to year-on-year profit growth in the second half.

I'd like to highlight the following key items from the results. Temp and Contracting net fees decreased by 3%, as volumes remained stable, and the year-on-year decline in average hours worked in Germany was in line with our expectations, and stable through the quarter.

Group Temp and Contracting volumes decreased by 5% year-on-year, including Germany down 6%, UK&I down 8%, Australia and New Zealand down 8%, and Rest of the World up 4%. Perm net fees decreased by 7%, driven by a 10% decline in volumes, and we saw modestly lower Perm activity and placement conversion through the quarter in markets outside of North America, Southern Europe, and Asia.

This was partially offset by a 3% increase in group average Perm fee, supported by our actions to target higher-salary roles. We continue to carefully allocate consultants to business lines with the most attractive productivity and long-term structural growth opportunity, target higher-paid roles for candidates, and invest in the best tools for our consultants.

Despite challenging markets, our actions delivered an acceleration in year-on-year average consultant net fee productivity growth to 8% in Q4, including notable increases in Germany and Rest of World. On a seasonally adjusted basis, productivity has now increased for a sector-leading 11 consecutive quarters.

Excluding the impact of country disposals and exits, group consultant headcount decreased by 4% sequentially in the quarter, and by 12% year-on-year. We've continued to make strong progress towards our structural cost-saving program, with a further £20 million per annum savings delivered in Q4.

Altogether, we have achieved £50 million per annum savings in FY26, exceeding our target of £45 million per annum by FY29, three years ahead of schedule, and in total have now delivered £115 million per annum of structural savings since the start of FY24. Our non-consultant headcount exited the quarter down 13% year-on-year.

As a result of the acceleration of our cost program in FY26, we expect to incur a circa £40 million exceptional restructuring charge, which will drive a £40 million per annum reduction in costs. In addition, we have undertaken a significant review of our global property estate outside of the countries we have exited or plan to exit.

This will lead to the downsize of circa 80 properties globally, which will drive a circa £10 million per annum saving, and will result in the impairment of our right-of-use property assets of circa £30 million. During the quarter, we took action to reshape our country portfolio, as we focus on building scale in high-performing and high-potential markets, where we have an ability to establish and grow leading positions.

As a result, we incurred a modest non-cash loss on the disposal of our operations in six European countries. The group's net cash position was circa £20 million, which is in line with our expectations, and reflects normal seasonal cash flows.

I'll now comment on the performance by each division in more detail. Our largest market of Germany saw fees down 7% year-on-year.

Temp and Contracting net fees decreased by 7%, with volumes down 6%, and a further 1% impact from negative hours and mix. Temp and Contracting volumes remained stable overall, and average hours worked in Germany remained stable through the quarter, and in line with our expectations.

Perm was challenging, but broadly stable sequentially through the quarter, and the year-on-year decline in net fees was steady at 12%. In our two largest specialisms, Technology was again flat year-on-year, while the net fee decline in Engineering, our second largest, eased to 20%, driven by greater stability in the automotive sector.

Accountancy & Finance was down 15%. Property performed strongly once again, with 38% net fee growth, driven by our focus on infrastructure and the energy sector.

This specialism now contributes 10% of our net fees in Germany, versus only 4% in FY24. Consultant headcount decreased by 6% in the quarter, and by 16% year-on-year.

Consultant net fee productivity increased by 9% year-on-year in Q4, driven by our ongoing focus on resource allocation, and we made strong progress with our structural cost-saving initiatives. In UK&I, fees decreased by 8%.

Temp and Contracting declined by 5%, but Perm remained subdued, down 12%, and activity softened slightly through the quarter. Fees in the private sector declined by 9%, with the public sector down 6%.

At the specialism level, Technology was stable versus prior year, while Accountancy & Finance and Construction & Property decreased by 9% and 2% respectively. Office Support was up 1%, as our actions to target higher-salary roles continue to offset lower volumes in junior roles.

Consultant headcount decreased by 4% in the quarter, and 16% year-on-year. Consultant net fee productivity increased by 8%, and we made further good progress in improving operational efficiency and the cost structures during the quarter, as we continue to optimize our office portfolio and delayer management.

Once again, a key driver of productivity has been greater focus from our consultants on higher-skilled roles, and as a result, year-on-year growth in average candidate salary remained at 7% for Perm in Q4. In Australia and New Zealand, fees decreased by 2% year-on-year, with Temp and Contracting stable, down 2%, but Perm became slightly more challenging through the quarter, and was down 1%.

The private sector grew by 5%, but the public sector was again tougher, and down 14%. At the specialism level, Construction & Property, our largest at 20% of ANZ net fees, increased by 2%, with Accountancy & Finance and Office Support up by 6% and 3% respectively.

Technology was tougher, and declined by 9%. Australia net fees were down 2%, with New Zealand at -13%.

ANZ consultant headcount was down 6% through the quarter, and by 8% year-on-year. Driven by our focus on resource allocation, consultant net fee productivity increased by 6%.

As with the UK&I, a key driver of our profit recovery has been greater focus from our consultants on higher-skilled roles. As a result, year-on-year growth in our average salary of our Perm placements was maintained at 4% in Q4.

In our Rest of World division, now comprising 18 countries, like-for-like fees decreased by 1%. Temp remained in positive year-on-year growth for the second consecutive quarter, with fees up 5%, but Perm declined by 5%.

As a reminder, our total actual growth rate includes the impact from our previously communicated exits from operations in Chile, Colombia, Thailand, and Mexico, and the recent disposal of our operations in six European countries. In EMEA ex-Germany, net fees decreased by 2%.

France, our largest Rest of the World country, remained challenging, with net fees down 17%, but our actions to address productivity and costs are being delivered on plan, and our profit performance improved in Q4. Portugal performed strongly, and Spain again achieved record quarterly net fees, and these were up 31% and 23% year-on-year respectively.

Poland grew by 6%. In the Americas, net fees decreased by 2%.

Momentum improved through the quarter in the US, which was down 1%, and Canada was down 8%. We have previously highlighted a substantial bid pipeline with large enterprise clients in North America, and we expect recent wins to mobilize over the coming quarters.

Asia net fees increased again by 8%. Japan grew by 9%, driven by strong growth in our Temp and Contracting business, while Greater China grew by 22%, with improved activity in Perm.

For Rest of the World as a whole, consultant headcount decreased by 2% in the quarter, and by 8% year-on-year. I'd like to take a few moments to update you on our strong strategic progress during the quarter.

As we previously shared with you, our initiatives to improve consultant net fee productivity in real terms and structurally improve our cost base will be key drivers of profit recovery, we are encouraged by our return to strong year-on-year profit growth in our second half. Amidst challenging markets, we are executing well and continue to make significant operational progress.

We continue to invest in high-potential and high-performing business lines, and scale back or exit those with low performance and potential. As previously communicated, we have exited four countries and sold our operations in six European countries over the last year, and consistent with our strategy, we recently announced we are exploring options relating to our businesses in Belgium, Brazil, Greater China, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the UAE.

Consultant fee productivity accelerated to 8% in the quarter, and has increased now for a sector-leading 11 consecutive quarters, driven by careful allocation of consultants to business lines with the most attractive productivity and long-term structural growth opportunity, together with greater focus from our consultants on higher-skilled roles, and our investments to provide them with the best tools. We are mobilizing new contract wins with several large enterprise clients, which we expect to contribute to net fees over the coming quarters.

Our programs to structurally reduce our cost base are performing well, with the £45 million per annum structural cost-saving target we set last year exceeded three years ahead of schedule. Before moving to current trading, I'd like to share some background behind our recent country portfolio decisions.

In the past, we have operated in many countries and specialisms, and that has spread us too thinly. Over the last year, we've made deliberate choices around where we compete, the specialisms we prioritize, the products we offer, and where we have the greatest opportunity to grow and establish leading positions.

Businesses that are number one or two in clearly defined markets by country and by specialism consistently deliver stronger growth, higher margins, and more resilient performances. Following careful assessment of our choices, we intend to build scale in high-performing and high-potential markets, where we have the greatest ability to maintain or establish leading positions.

We will reinforce our competitive advantage to differentiate and to drive leadership positions through investment in our proprietary data and technology, our people, our brand, and reputation. Client feedback is consistent across permanent recruitment and Temp and Contracting.

They value recruitment agencies whose consultants provide deep specialism expertise and access to high-quality candidates. In every market we compete in, our ambition is clear: to grow, to achieve leadership, and deliver the benefits that come with it through faster matching, greater exposure to higher-value roles, stronger margins, and better outcomes for clients and candidates.

Where we can't, we'll step back and reallocate investments to generate superior returns elsewhere. Progress on the design of our strategy and the shaping of a more competitive operating model is well underway.

We are on track to share an update alongside our full year results on the 20th of August, and I would like to thank all of our Hays colleagues for their hard work and commitment through the year. Moving on to current trading and guidance.

Our actions to deliver strong consultant net fee productivity growth and cost discipline continue to offset our lower net fees in H2, and we currently expect FY26 pre-exceptional operating profit will be at the top of the £37 million to £46 million profit consensus range. To date, we have observed minimal direct impact from the developments in the Middle East, but we will remain vigilant to the modest softening in Perm activity through the quarter in some markets.

Given heightened levels of global macroeconomic uncertainty, we continue to expect near-term market conditions to remain challenging, with greater resilience in Temp and Contract than in Perm. We were pleased once again with our net fee productivity through Q4, and believe our group consultant headcount capacity is appropriate for the current market conditions, and therefore expect it to remain broadly stable in Q1 '27, as we balance focused investment in high-performing and high-potential business lines with improving productivity in more challenging areas.

We will continue to structurally reduce our cost base to support our investments in data and technology, and position Hays strongly for when end markets recover. We'll share more information regarding these initiatives and any associated restructuring charges at our full year results in August.

Finally, there are no material working day impacts expected in Q1 '27. I'll now hand you back to the administrator, and we are happy to take your questions.

Hi, good morning. Just a couple from me, if I may.

Just thinking about Perm markets and their ongoing challenging nature. Can you just talk about kind of client behavior and views, and how that developed through the quarter, particularly in places like France and Australia?

Then secondly, in Germany, just whether you are seeing any impact from the fiscal stimulus as yet, and what your expectations are for that coming through over the next six months or so? Thanks very much.

Thanks, Andy. I'll pick the first question up on the Perm that we've seen through Q4, and I think back to the previous trading update we did in April, and clearly events had just sort of kicked off in the Middle East, and there was questions then of have you seen anything in your business, and clearly at that stage, the answer was no.

I think three months later on, what have we seen? We've seen, if I compare the level of job inflow in markets outside of North America, Asia, and Southern Europe, and I'll come back to those regions separately, so that leaves the UK&I, Australia, and Northern Europe, our job inflow is down about 5% versus where we were in February and March at pre-Easter levels.

There has been a modest softening, I would say, in the top-of-funnel activity coming through, but not a dramatic one. At this stage, we've continued to see decent levels of conversion on jobs, but probably a slight softening as well on the time to hire as business decision-making has lengthened slightly.

Andy, I'd say it's been a modest softening in those markets rather than anything significant, but we remain vigilant, and we'll see how things play out, and clearly there's broader macroeconomic uncertainty. That leads through to business confidence and fragility there.

That's what we're seeing right now. In North America, actually, we're seeing improving momentum in Perm.

The US business, which has got a big business there in Construction & Property, is seeing good momentum and good levels of activity actually improving through the quarter. Asia's been pretty strong.

Japan's had a good Perm quarter, has Greater China, it's been quite upbeat there. As I say, in Southern Europe, we've continued to hit record after record in the business in Spain and the businesses in Portugal.

Italy a performer as well. It's not a one-size-fits-all by any means.

On the other hand, Temp and Contracting has been really, really resilient, and we've continued to see stable trends in volumes working through the quarter, and consistent with where we were back in February and March. Then specifically on the Germany position, we talked about for some time the impact on working hours in Germany.

That was stable in the quarter. We were down 5%, which is consistently where we were in the previous quarter, and we're continuing to see that largely offset by better margin and better day rate on temps placed and contractors placed.

Overall, pretty stable trends in Germany. Whether we're seeing any specific impact there of the fiscal stimulus, again, it's quite hard to say.

I probably need another quarter or two, and nothing obvious, Andy, at this stage, but certainly, we've seen a pretty stable picture in Germany right now in this quarter, which is quite pleasing in many respects.

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Andy.

Morning, hi. With adjusted operating profit guided to the top end of the range for FY26, I just wanted if you could confirm that the sale of those loss-making markets has no bearing on that.

This was all just sort of structural cost savings that sort of got you there, and a slightly better top line. Then my sort of follow-up to that is what sort of cost savings could we see from those sold countries you've even announced, and what about the sort of remaining 13 that are available for sale at the moment on top of the 50 million?

I appreciate you don't consider them structural, but I'm interested to know what sort of savings you could get there. Then my second part is just on trading again.

It looked like in terms of year-on-year trends, there's been a material improvement, but the outlook is very, very similar. Are we overall at a group level just looking at those Perm markets you've just flagged as really holding you back, because if year-on-year trends are certainly improving, maybe that's just improving to a sort of a stable position, but is it just that those sort of softer Perm markets you've just flagged, or is there anything else to mention?

Thanks, James. I'll pick up the profit and the cost question first.

We've guided towards the top end of the range for the full year, which is the 37 to 46 million, I think consensus was about 43, ahead of where the market is. Actually, interestingly, if you think about where that is from a year-on-year perspective, it means that this second-half profit performance is up about 30% versus H2 last year.

I think that's a good reinforcement of the actions we've taken to both improve our productivity and to look at the cost base more structurally as well. With regards to the countries that we've disposed of during the quarter, the six countries that we disposed of made around £15 million per annum in fees and pretty much zero from a P&L perspective.

Cost base there clearly about £15 million per annum. By the way, we don't include disposed countries in our structural cost savings because we wouldn't see that as our actions to really reduce the underlying cost base.

That is more mathematical. Interestingly, similarly with the further seven countries that we're reviewing right now, those together this year will do about £70 million of net fees, and again, modest level of operating profit, not far, but somewhere between 0 and £1 million.

Not a lot. You can see there that the cost base clearly is around the £70 million mark as well.

As we move forward, and we explain further in August about the cost-saving plans we have going forward, we won't be, again, including the cost reductions from those countries in those numbers. We'd like to keep ourselves focused on delivering real cost savings from the underlying cost structures of the business.

Hopefully that was clear. Just moving on to the question around outlook and Temp and Perm, it's a fair question.

Our exit rate overall was at 5%, June performance was consistent with where we were overall as a business. We 5% down in the quarter and 5% down in June if I adjust for working days.

Then when I look at the mix within there, Perm was down 6% in June, and our Temp and Contracting business was down 3%, not dramatically different. Remember, last year, we actually had quite a tough Perm in Q4, and particularly in May and June.

We had a really sort of slow end to the last financial year in FY25 following the tariff and all that sort of stuff that happened in April time. Actually, that Perm is against quite a soft comparator, and I think looking at it, I think it reinforces the trends that we've tried to highlight in this trading update, that Temp and Contracting feels very stable.

We look at the number of temps and contractors we have out on placement. It's stable overall.

We continue to see clients holding on to temps and contractors because they're valuable resources, we see lower levels of finishers than we have done historically, slightly lower levels of new starters, but overall, it's a stable trend. The margin and hours trends are pretty stable as well.

Perm is, as I said before, and I've tried to be helpful of which markets we're seeing that little softening in Perm activity versus the markets where we're seeing actually quite robust Perm markets and we're continuing to grow. We don't have huge sort of visibility going forward in Perm, as you're well aware, and hence we have to be relatively sort of considered as we think through the summer, and then what the outlook is for September.

September is always a really important Perm month for us, so much of the activity we're doing now will be Perm fees in September. We're watching it very carefully, but I think we've tried to be as clear as we can, James, on our forward visibility on Perm versus Temp and Contracting.

Very clear. Thank you.

Thanks.

Hi, good morning, gentlemen. Two questions, if I may.

First one is on the portfolio reshaping. Could you walk us through the specific criteria used to classify a country as core versus non-core?

Beyond the seven countries already under review, are there any additional markets currently on the table, and should we expect further portfolio announcements before the full year results on the 20th of August? Then secondly, on dividend and capital allocation, and with disposal proceeds now coming in from the portfolio reshaping, how should we think about dividend ahead of the full year results, and going forward, what will be your capital allocation priority with your new reshaped portfolio?

Thank you.

Thanks, Simon. Hopefully, I relatively clear in my script of how we've approached the country portfolio, and just to be clear, the 16 remaining countries will be the core countries that we continue with as a business going forward, and there'll be nothing else for review.

No, we've tried to be very clear on how we prioritize the business going forward, and what we want to achieve is a more focused business. I think in the past, we have been quite thinly spread on a geographic basis, and that's led to several subscale businesses in a number of those markets.

When we stand back from this, what do we want to achieve? We want to achieve market leadership in the markets that we operate in, and that's when we look at it both by geography and, importantly, the specialisms within those geographies.

The reason for that is the returns for being market leader are significant in terms of higher growth rates historically, stronger margins, and, importantly, greater resilience. I think no business has underpinned that and sort of lived up to that more than our German business, where we have a really, really strong market leadership, and that business has not just grown structurally over many years.

Remember, that was a business we bought that did £3 million operating profit back in 2003, and we've grown that exponentially over many years and reinforced that market leadership position, and also it's performed incredibly well through this tougher down market over the last 3 years. I think that really reinforces the benefits of having that market leadership position.

We'll reinforce those positions with investment, importantly, in data and technology, our people, and our brand. It's important to prioritize that investment, and you can't spread yourself again too thinly, and we have to prioritize that where we have scale and where we have focus as a business.

You put that all together, and our view is clear that the benefits of leadership are significant in terms of faster matching of candidates, of delivering against higher-value roles, stronger margins, and ultimately, that is about delivering better outcomes for our clients and for our candidates. This has been a pretty measured piece of work.

Clearly, it's a big change, and we have many good-quality businesses around the world which will leave us over a period of time, and they will succeed, I'm sure, under different leadership. Our job and our priority is to focus on where our returns are greatest, and this is the route that we're going down.

Hopefully, that was relatively clear. In terms of dividend and capital allocation going forward, clearly, we had a big reset this time last year with the dividend, and we set out our capital allocation strategy then.

Clearly, I'm not going to talk too much about that because that's a decision for August and the board then, but safe to say that we had a reset then. We changed our core dividend to three times our cover, and that obviously a recalibration at that point.

We'll talk about that more in August going forward. All

right. Thank you very much.

Morning all, Rory here. Firstly, wanted to ask on Temp and Contractor, how many months now would you say that Temp and Contractor net fees have felt sequentially stable in aggregate?

Then within that, how many markets are showing kind of positive momentum versus how many markets are showing kind of still ongoing deterioration? Then secondly, on the cost savings, you're already ahead of your original three-year target.

Can you talk about how you accelerated those plans over the course of this year? Does that just reflect that some markets overall were just worse than hoped, or have you kind of been more proactive and sped up decisions about which areas to close and move on from?

Thanks, Rory. I'll pick up the question.

The first question was around Temp and Contracting and how long have we seen broadly stable markets across the world? I think we can see it in our year-on-year volumes in most of our markets are slightly down versus where we were this time last year.

Actually, I'd say that we've been pretty stable since our second quarter. We had a pretty decent return to work in the majority of our businesses around the world, and that was the first time we'd had that in three years.

Our business in the UK&I and Australia slightly ahead, Germany was in line, and within Germany, we had two parts. We had the Contracting business, which felt pretty stable, but we had a Temp business, which was clearly still facing a few headwinds at that point, particularly in the automotive sector.

I'd say that's probably been the area of weakness in our major markets over the last 12 months. I think we've been pretty stable from around September, October time in the UK&I, in Australia, and in the Germany Contracting business.

The Germany Temp business took a step backwards from Q2 to Q3. It's actually been quite stable since then, and we have actually seen a little bit more activity in the auto sector in the last quarter, interestingly.

Don't get me wrong, we're not back to the levels where we were three or four years ago, but a lot of the autos have heavily downsized, but they've got work to do, and we've actually seen more inbound business in the last three or four months there than we had in the last two or three years, which is quite encouraging. Look, I think it's been a pretty stable outlook.

Then we've got the countries, Rory, where we're really starting to put the hammer down and grow. We've seen some fantastic growth in Spain, in Poland, in Japan, a number of our focused businesses where we see a really big opportunity to grow and to really scale Temp and Contracting.

We see those absolutely as growth markets. They're relatively small today, but actually some of them starting to get quite big now.

We have close to 1,000 contractors out in Poland. We have a Spanish business now, which is in several hundred contractors working.

Japan similarly, we're really moving those business forward. Over 70% growth in Japan in Temp and Contracting this quarter is fantastic.

I think we're up about 40% in Spain. There's lots and lots of opportunity there, and whilst the market has a level of uncertainty, we also have a level of stability in those markets, which we're really encouraging.

Cost savings, yeah, we've done a lot this year, to be fair. We particularly accelerated that in the second half of the year.

We did about £15 million of annualized savings in H1. That means we'll have done about £35 million of savings in H2.

How have we done that? There's been a significant level of work across Europe and Germany.

Clearly, some of that has been driven by the broader macro there, and some of the fragility we've seen in regions such as France. We've also done an awful lot of work to position the business better going forward, and Germany and Europe has been a large part of that.

We've continued to work hard on some of our support functional areas, in finance, we've done a lot of work around our shared service center structures, and also some of our ways of working and look to how we do things around our cash management cycle. We're doing a lot of work in the HR area, a lot of restructure there, and then finally in technology, we've done an awful lot of work in how we structure our technology function globally as well.

Many, many parts. The other area of acceleration in this half has been our property portfolio, and we've done a significant review of the excess space and capacity that we have there also, and how do we better bring the people together in locations.

That's led to consolidations and ultimately the exits of a number of properties around the world in the last three or four months. About 80 properties have been touched overall, either we've exited and consolidated, or we've significantly downsized.

That's been a huge part of work as well. Rory, obviously, that's ongoing.

We'll give you an update in August of the things that we've got on our radar going forward.

Great. Thank you.

Just I guess related to that, the other thing you've done a lot on is the country portfolio and the exits. You've already made some comments on explaining that shift in strategy.

Just to get a sense of the relative size of the core remaining 16 countries, could you say how much of net fees and operating profits they were at the previous peak, or how much of profits those core markets have represented on average over the cycle?

Yeah. We could have a good debate on what the previous peak was, Rory.

I think we'd probably go back to it feels like a sort of a playback in time. If we look at those businesses in 2018, 2019, which I would probably focus on rather than the sort of the world of 2022, which was a bit weird, they did about just over 100, about £110 to £112 million of fees then, and about £20 million of profit.

Those were different times, and businesses then where Perm markets were substantially better. We have to react to the world that we're in today, and as I said out very clearly, we do about £85 million of fees in those 13 businesses now, and no profit.

That's the business we have today, and that's the business that we've had to address.

Got it. That's clear.

Thank you.

Thanks very much. Just two outstanding questions from me.

Just finally on the portfolio reshaping, in terms of those businesses in totality, what level of like-for-like growth will they have delivered in fiscal '26? Clearly, some of that's been excluded from the continuing like-for-like data, but just in terms of thinking about how it's going to remove potentially a drag for fiscal '27.

Then secondly, just on the US within Rest of the World, you mentioned those enterprise contractor frameworks coming down the pipeline. Does that give you sort of strong confidence or moderate confidence that you're going to see further momentum in the US going into fiscal Q1 and Q2?

Thanks, Karl. I was quite clear that they're only £15 million of fees from those businesses we exited, the impact on like-for-like growth is negligible, actually, for this financial year with or without those countries, because they just don't have that big an effect.

My learned colleagues in the room have just reminded me that the number that I just gave in response to Rory's number, £20 million or so operating profit in those countries in FY18 and '19, was actually pre central costs. Actually, if I allocate the group costs to those businesses, it's about £13 million of profit as opposed to £20 million, I should correct myself just to make that absolutely clear.

Just to summarize, Karl, on those six countries, because they only do £15 million of fees versus a business that does close to £900 million, the like-for-like impact is negligible in this financial year.

Sorry, to just just to clarify,

I was

I was interested in just what the 13 countries, what that like-for-like growth of the 13 rather than the exited ones would look like.

I don't have the answer to that, Karl. I'll have to get back to you.

I can't do the math in my head that quick. The enterprise businesses, as I said previously on the last couple of calls, has had a really good pipeline over the last 12 months.

Really encouraging number of wins we've had, particularly in North America. Several of those are now moving towards implementation, and will start to come on stream through the next half or half year.

Looking forward to seeing that come through in H1 '27. Some quite exciting opportunities, particularly in the States, which is really encouraging.

The pipeline itself is still strong, we're set quite well there, and I expect to see that coming through over the next 6 to 12 months will be quite encouraging.

Great. Thanks, James.

Thanks, Karl.

Thank you all. If that's all we have for questions, I'd like to thank you again for joining today's call.

I look forward to speaking to you next as our full year results on the 20th of August, and should anyone have any follow-up questions, Kean, Prash, and myself will be available to take calls for the rest of the day. Thank you.