Bernard Berson: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Thank you for joining us for our Bidcorp trading update for the 4 months ended October 2026. We live in interesting times, and there is no doubt that these last 4 months have been interesting, and they continue to be interesting. Overall, we think our performance has been strong under the circumstances. The business is in very good shape. Our operations around the world have generally adapted to circumstances very well, and overall, we are very, very pleased with the results that we continue to achieve. If you look at the numbers overall, I am only going to talk in constant currency terms because the rand goes up, the rand goes down, the rand stays the same, and has quite a big implication on the numbers.
Bernard Berson: From our point of view, constant currency is the only true measurement because that reflects the way we manage the business, which is in a multiplicity of local currencies. In the first 4 months of this financial year, and we updated you at the end of August, so I guess this is just a continuation, we started off the year relatively strongly in July. August, we saw a little bit of a weakening. September continued that trend, and in October, we saw a slight weakening once again. When I say weakening, it is a weakening off a strong base. Bearing in mind that the European summer does have quite a big impact on our numbers at this point in time, the European summer in July and August was very, very hot, and then the weather changed in September. To a degree, that has an impact.
Bernard Berson: But I think there is a far larger macro picture in place, and for all of us who are aware of reality, it is pretty tough out there. In the economies we operate in, bearing in mind we do not operate in America and we do not operate in the chip space or the AI space, the real economy is tough out there. There is almost no GDP growth in almost every geography we operate in. Inflation, which I will talk a little bit more about, is an interesting animal at this point in time. Consumer confidence is exceptionally low. We have interest rates rising in various jurisdictions, which is obviously impacting consumer confidence. You have geopolitical uncertainty. You have exceptionally high energy prices. You have a whole lot of factors that are meeting. Notwithstanding that, I think our business performed exceptionally well.
Bernard Berson: Our top-line revenue, which I guess is the weak point of these numbers, and it is only a weak point in terms of statistics, grew by 2.4% in constant currency. Bearing in mind there is absolutely zero inflation in our numbers, there is zero food inflation, and in fact, we are probably content that there is deflation, as strange as that might seem. In the basket of product we sell, across most our businesses, we are pretty confident that there is almost no inflation, and like I say, we think there is actually deflation, which we are seeing in a few markets. How sustainable that is, we do not know. We do not really think it will be sustainable, and there will be some inflation coming through.
Bernard Berson: You have got this consumer weakness on one side, and when you look at retailer results in our geographies, the retailers will all be saying the exact same thing on the opposite side, that they are seeing increased footfall in their stores. That customers are seeking more value propositions and are down trading. The corollary of that is the foodservice market at this point of the cycle is under a little bit of pressure, consumers are under a little bit of pressure, and it is tough getting revenue growth out there. I think our teams are doing exceptionally well in driving growth to the extent they have. Some people will say that 2.5% growth is not acceptable. I think our teams have done fantastically well because that is real growth. That is absolutely real volume growth.
Bernard Berson: There is almost no acquisition in that or baked into the base that was not there last year, and it is all hard-fought gains. Linked to that is our continual program of rebalancing our customer portfolio and exiting business that might not be profitable for us in the longer term. In the Netherlands business, we exited a contract about a year ago, which obviously impacts the comparators. That was worth about 35 million euros on an annualized basis. In the UK, although we have the Whitbread acquisition, the Whitbread customer acquisition piece in there, it should be noted that Whitbread have closed down or sold all of their pubs. I think that happened sometime beginning of September, and that accounted for 40% of the Whitbread volumes, which obviously has an implication to the UK numbers in terms of top line.
Bernard Berson: The pleasing part that comes out of all of this is we have got a good blend of customer mix in this, that on 2.4% revenue growth, we are able to deliver almost, I think it is about a 9% growth in trading profit and an over 10% growth in headline earnings per share, which shows that we are getting operational efficiencies, and also some balance sheet efficiencies coming through in terms of the interest cost and the share buybacks from the previous year that we spoke about. We are seeing our gross margins improve, and our gross margins are not improving because of pricing capability. Our gross margins are improving because of what we said we were going to do and how we manage the customer portfolio and the product portfolio.
Bernard Berson: If you have the correct type of customer, you are selling them the correct type of product, that either we are sourcing correctly or manufacturing ourself even, we are going to see that accretion in margin. There is no doubt that our strategy over the last few years continues to give us benefit in driving those margins higher. I have said it before, customers will only pay the correct price for product. We cannot get a premium over what anybody else can. We have to be competitive and relevant in the market. Therefore, our competitiveness comes from our procurement capability and our executional capability, which is reflected in our OPEX. On the OPEX side, we have been severely impacted by the increase in diesel prices, as has everybody else, and we have been severely impacted by an increase in energy prices, particularly in Europe and the UK.
Bernard Berson: The wars in both the Middle East and in the Ukraine have had an impact on energy prices, and obviously diesel prices are very elevated. To a large degree, we have had to take that increase on the nose. To increase trading profits by, I think it is 8.5% in constant currency, notwithstanding quite a big hit on our expense line from fuel and from electricity, I think is a great achievement. On the acquisitions front, it has been relatively quiet. We have done 5 acquisitions, the largest of which is in New Zealand, which is an export business into Fiji and Pacific Islands, which only was effective 1 September. That is the largest of the acquisitions. Annualized revenue, I think, is in the region of about 80 million New Zealand dollars.
Bernard Berson: That really has not swung the needle at all here, other than to say we are very happy with that acquisition and the prospects that it will bring to the New Zealand business. The other 4 businesses have all been small manufacturing operations, which have not amounted to a whole lot of money, but give us expertise in various different categories, in different geographies, and that is absolutely all part of our stated objective of diversifying into becoming a food business and vertically integrating, which I think we are seeing great success from and is helping us drive margin. Those acquisitions were 1 in South Africa, 1 in the UK, 1 in Poland, and 1 in Italy. As I say, they are all in manufacturing of different things.
Bernard Berson: One is in patisserie, one is in fish, one of them is in meat and processed meats and hams and salamis, and one of them is in a broad range of frozen value-add type products, pasta-type products, sauces, et cetera. That will continue to be a priority for us moving forward. If we can just go through the regions very quickly. Australasia, we definitely seen bounce back after a couple of very tough years. The New Zealand business has rebounded very nicely across all its business segments. The economy is probably not improving, but it is not getting worse, and that is a positive. They did have a general election there on the weekend. The outcome of that is not known yet. That may have an impact, might have a positive or a negative impact. We really just do not know.
Bernard Berson: Confidence does seem to be recovering slightly in New Zealand, and our team continue to deliver exceptionally well. The growth trajectory that we've enjoyed for 20-something years is continuing, and that business is once again setting their own records and doing exceptionally well. The Australian business has seen a rebound and a positive trajectory as well, in an economy that's tough. Interest rates have gone up twice in the last few months. The consumer's under pressure. The politics are a little bit of a mess. Generally, it's not a great scenario from a consumer point of view. So to have got some top-line growth and to have got bottom-line growth, I think speaks volumes to management's capability and ability to execute on the plan, and the business continues to perform well. We're very satisfied with the performance of the Australasian segment.
Bernard Berson: In the UK, we performed adequately, satisfactorily, I'm going to say very well. Once again, there's very little positive to say about the economic situation, the political situation, the general vibe of the place in the UK. It's a pretty miserable place. The consumer is pretty miserable, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work it out. You can read a very little amount of data, and you'll understand that the consumer is under pressure and volumes are very hard to come by. Notwithstanding that, we've seen good volume growth. We've seen excellent growth in the correct customer base. Across our business, we're seeing improvement in the UK, and revenue growth was 3-point-something percent, and profitability growth has been in excess of 10%.
Bernard Berson: We're absolutely on the path to recovery, what I call the path to recovery there, and seeing our margins trend, our operating margins trend to where we want them to be. Obviously impacted by the diesel price and energy prices, particularly in the UK, and like I say, in Europe. Turning over to Europe, there's a variety of factors in play here. Western Europe is, as one of my colleagues said, lazy. The results are lazy, and that's because the economies are just lackluster. There's no growth, there's no spark. There's just very little positive happening. So for us to have held our own and shown a little bit of growth in Western Europe, I think is remarkable. When you look at some of our competitors, they appear to be going backward at a rate of knots. Our business continues to go forward, and it's tough going.
Bernard Berson: Make no mistake about it's not easy. It really is tough going. It's hard-fought gains, but we continue to see some strong, not strong, but adequate growth out of our Western European businesses, and there I'm mainly referring to Netherlands and Belgium. The Italian business is still seeing good growth. We're still cycling through some projects, some expansion, and we continue to see that. However, in reality, we'll see that rate of growth taper off as we grow into our skin. But the business is doing well, and we're looking at some further both acquisition and geographic expansion opportunities in the Italian market. Eastern Europe is a little bit stronger than Western Europe. However, they're probably feeling food deflation more so than Western Europe. So volumes are up and revenues are slightly down.
Bernard Berson: In our Czech business, we were actually in Europe last week, we went through this in great detail. Volumes are up nicely, but the average euro per kilo of what we sell is down, that has got nothing to do with the mix. It is not like our mix has changed, suddenly we are selling cheap product. It clearly has to do with the deflation, the input cost of the product that we are selling, which is an interesting phenomenon. We are still getting nice growth in the Baltics. Spain remains a work in progress, it will be for the next few years. We are doing a lot of work in the background. We are not going to see short-term results, but we are happy with putting the correct building blocks in place. Portugal is a similar story.
Bernard Berson: We are growing into some new infrastructure we put in, we probably need to put more infrastructure in, but we are happy where we are on the path. That is Europe. Emerging markets, once again, is a mixed bag. South Africa continues to perform well. Once again, inflation is very, very moderate in our food basket, growth is very difficult to come by. For us to deliver a double-digit growth in profitability, once again, in our South African businesses is truly a commendable achievement from our teams, they have done excellently. South America is a little bit of a mixed bag. Chile, we are doing well. We seem to have got the traction we were looking for, we are absolutely on the right path, are developing some scale there. Brazil is in a world of pain economically.
Bernard Berson: Our business is fine, but obviously you have got this huge political upheaval that went on, that they thought they were going to get a right-wing government. They ended up getting a left-wing government, a candidate who fled the country, a stock market that plummeted, consumer confidence that is in the toilet, an exchange rate, interest rates that are like at 20%, even though inflation is only at 4%. So you have got a whole lot of mismatches, the Brazilian economy is just. But our business is doing relatively okay. Argentina is very small, very volatile. Hopefully, Argentina will end up okay out of all of this, but it is just hard going through it. But it is small, it does not really make a difference.
Bernard Berson: In the Middle East, we are seeing a return to normality, in fact, we are now seeing months, certainly weeks and months, where we are exceeding trading from a year ago, which was pre-war. So once we go through the next six months, we should see a nice uptick in the Middle East, there is no doubt that volumes have rebounded very quickly. Confidence seems to have come back very quickly. The issue we face there is more of a supply chain disruption of product not getting into the market reliably enough, quickly enough, obviously, it is coming in at elevated cost, elevated shipping cost. So that is the Middle East. Turkey remains small and marginal, so not much to talk about there. Moving over to the East, Singapore continues to improve.
Bernard Berson: Malaysia is going through a little bit of a change period, in that we are changing the composition of our product portfolio. It was very highly concentrated in chocolate, in couverture and chocolate, and we have expanded into many other categories, and we need to, yeah, bed that down. It is no problem. The business is still growing, just not at the same rate that it was. They need to take a breather for a short period of time and settle down some of the issues.
Bernard Berson: In Greater China, revenue is under a lot of pressure, as there is the trend away from Western product. There is no doubt about that. We have spoken about it before. But we have adapted our business accordingly. We are trimming the business as we go, and our profitability is actually slightly higher in the period on lower revenue, but we think on a more sustainable revenue base. I think that covers all four.
Bernard Berson: I will speak a little bit about inflation and the paradox, because our basket of food inflation, like I say, is zero to negative. As strange as that might be and as difficult as that might be for people to understand, that is just the reality. There is inflation in certain proteins, but it is way offset by declines. And there is also inflation in fresh produce, which is a very small proportion of the basket. So we have not seen inflation. We have probably seen deflation, and there are signs that inflation, food inflation, will set in. Now, I am not sure whether that is going to come to fruition or not, because if oil prices carry on coming down, I am not sure there is going to be the cost pressure, the food inflation pressure, that has been following. I may be wrong.
Bernard Berson: We have always said we like a 2% to 3% sweet spot food inflation rate. If you take a 3% added onto our 2.4%, suddenly you are at 5.4% revenue growth without any acquisition. You put on another 1% or 2% for acquisition, suddenly you get to the 7% revenue growth in a flat market. And that is sort of the algorithm that we work to.
Bernard Berson: So we are absolutely happy with where we are at at the moment. Maybe not all the planets are aligning at the same time, but they certainly will. The other side of the inflation dilemma is general inflation is running higher, and it is running higher for a number of reasons, fuel, energy, and the AI data center build-up is putting pressure on different parts of the economy, different parts of service providers, real estate availability, power availability, and it is having a challenge in that respect.
Bernard Berson: You have also still got labor inflation, of which most of it is governmental. It is legislated increases to minimum wages, to social securities, to pensions, to work covers, to obligatory payroll taxes, and all these other issues that governments are imposing on business, I guess to make up for their shortfalls on the other side. And that is just something that is reality that we have to work with, and we do manage that and take care of that through the business. So, on an overall basis, we are exceptionally proud of what our teams have delivered over the four months. Yes, the revenue growth to some people might seem a little bit disappointing, and in an ideal world, of course, we would all like a higher revenue growth, but let us be realistic. It is tough out there. Economies are tough.
Bernard Berson: There's very little good news, and whatever we're gaining is hard graft, probably market share that we're gaining. One day when things turn in various markets, there's no doubt our businesses are exceptionally well poised to see a rapid uptake of some of that revenue, which is going to have a huge impact as it falls to the bottom line. We continue to use technology to refine the process to give us efficiencies. I think that's borne out in the fact that our trading profit is growing by more than our revenue growth, although some of it does come from margin. I just generally think we're in a good shape. David will talk about the balance sheet and the financing. All of that's in good shape.
Bernard Berson: Yeah, it's negative out there, and I don't want to sound negative, but it's very difficult to get enthused about economies that aren't growing, about incompetent governments that are mismanaging economies. It's a challenge to drive growth in those circumstances. But I think if you can drive growth in tough times, they'll turn. The tough times will change, the tough times will improve, and our business will be in a very, very strong position when that does happen. We saw that happen in New Zealand as soon as the economy started improving a little bit. We're taking the rough and tough decisions.
Bernard Berson: Our business was in great shape, and we are seeing a very rapid rebound in New Zealand, for example, and I have no doubt we'll see that in other parts of the world. I'm going to hand over to David now. If you do have any questions, please send them through the normal way, through the Q&A, and we'll come back to you and answer those as soon as we can. Over to David.
David Cleasby: Thanks, Bernard, and morning to everyone. I won't cover up anything that Bernard's already highlighted, and obviously, we put out a detailed SENS announcement this morning for you to read. I think just cost of doing business is a little bit up, and that primarily is a result of obviously slightly higher activities, but also cost push, as Bernard alluded to, fuel, energy, and labor costs. The EBITDA margin has improved, as has the trading margin. EBITDA before IFRS 16, which is the normal measure, was up to 6.6%, 50 basis points higher than the corresponding period. The tax rate is at the high end of the range, 27%, but within what we've guided. Working capital, normal for this time of the year. We absorb working capital into the H1 of the year, it generates into the H2, and that's followed its normal routine.
David Cleasby: But having said that, the utilization in terms of activity levels is down, and our working capital days, measured on an average basis, are 2 days less than what they were for the corresponding period. Working capital remains well managed and within our expectations. Capital investments, and that includes acquisitions, we spent ZAR 1.3 billion in the quarter, but that is significantly lower than what we have done in the corresponding period. I think everyone just needs to bear in mind, there is no strict regime which you spend CapEx on. It comes in fits and starts. It depends on the development, it depends on authorizations, and therefore, you cannot really read into the low spend in the first 4 months compared to the previous one. We are still targeting our normal range of capital investments of the 1.5% to 2% of revenue, and that is obviously our medium-term target.
David Cleasby: Free cash flow mirrored what it was in the previous period. No real issues. Obviously, slightly higher working capital absorption, better operating cash flow generation, larger distributions to shareholders, and we did buy back an additional 680-odd thousand shares at a cost of about ZAR 300 million in the period. From a balance sheet perspective, the balance sheet remains strong, as we like it, conservatively geared. All our thresholds in terms of debt covenants and the like are well within what the tolerances are, and there are no issues.
David Cleasby: There are some loan maturities which we are working on at the moment, and we are looking at how we best place to minimize the cost in an interest rate environment that obviously is increasing. I mean, it is a little bit variable, but it is significantly higher than what it was a number of years ago. That is all in process. I think just a last question to add, because obviously, as we look forward, the rand had a significant impact on the rand translated results, but the impact of that will dilute as we go forward into the H2 of the year. So I think you just need to factor that in when you are looking at the rand result performance of the group. Other than that, yeah, I will hand back to you, Bernard, for questions.
Bernard Berson: Okay, thanks, David. I am going to just go through these questions as they came in. There are not many today, thankfully. The first one is, "What is the constant FX growth in Australasia in revenue and trading profit in the first 4 months?" The answer to that is revenue is about 4.5% up, and trading profit is about 6% up. Do not read too much into that because October did have one trading day less this year than last year, which we make up in November. I know it is very technical, but you can see the underlying trend there is relatively positive. "What was the Whitbread contract impact to volume growth in the UK?" That is a little bit of a difficult one to answer, because it came online beginning of September, I think, of 2025. So you had it in for one month in the prior year.
Bernard Berson: Then this year, they closed down the pubs, and they sold some of the pubs. Some of the pubs are still buying through us, some of them are buying through other people. It is actually just not a simple answer on that. I think the important part of the Whitbread issue, though, is it was never a contract that we were going to get rich and famous out of. It might have been quite a high volume type of activity. But the 40% actually made the 60% that remained easier to do. The 60% of business is into hotels. It is a smaller range of product, and it is a more generic range of product that we get procurement benefit through the rest of the business.
Bernard Berson: Please comment on broader China and whether sales pressure is broad-based or rather a function of channel shift away from restaurant towards in-home consumption." I actually can not answer that, and I am not sure anybody can. We are just facing pressure everywhere in China and Hong Kong. The consumer is under pressure. The economy is not growing. People are not spending. They are down trading. They are boycotting Western-type product, Western-type outlets. It is a whole combination of events. Having said that, we still have a base of business there. We still have a very sizable base of business, and we are still profitable, which I think is quite incredible. I do not think there are too many Western operating businesses that still make any money in China. So the fact that we are able to make some money, I think, is incredible.
Bernard Berson: Without intimating anything about your age, please could you give a summary of management continuity planning?" Well, the one thing I will tell you is I am younger than David. It does not look that way. He has got a healthy head of black hair there. Mine is a little bit grayer because I have to answer these questions. And just in case you want to know, I am 61 years old, or young. So, we have got a fantastic team in place. We have got a broad-based team. David and I actually do very little. And probably some of the commentary from some of the commentators how ridiculously well paid we are probably bears testament to that.
Bernard Berson: And in seriousness though, we have got a team of competent people around the world who run the business, and we do not run a centralized operation. We run a highly decentralized operation. For us, it is more important to have the correct resource and the correct skill at each individual business. And out of that will come some type of succession for both David and myself. I do not know what your view is as to how many more weeks we should stay here, but we have still got a few more in us.
Bernard Berson: Yeah. And I suppose you are asking for a definitive answer. I am not going to give you a definitive answer other than to tell you it is something that is discussed. It is something that is discussed internally, and obviously from a board point of view, there has to be an understanding of it and an awareness of it, which there absolutely is. And there is a fantastic team of people. We employ 31,000 people around the world, and they are a highly talented group of people.
Bernard Berson: Right, I like this one from Nick Webster. Hi, Bernard. Thanks for reminding me how miserable life is in the UK. I did not think you need reminding, Nick. That is there all the time. Two questions, please. In Australia, you called out the tough macro, which is very evident, just had the weakest consumer confidence print in 4 years and a very weak business confidence reading. Do you see your positive momentum as under more pressure heading into year-end in the H2?
Bernard Berson: I do not know what the answer to that is, Nick. I mean, interest rates went up again by a quarter of a point on Tuesday. The consumer is under pressure. Notwithstanding that, our sales growth is holding up more or less where it was. Christmas obviously is a very important time. It does not seem like the Grinch is stealing Christmas yet. So things seem to be holding up okay. Is it going to get worse?
Bernard Berson: I am not sure. But it is not great anyway. Maybe people have given up caring, which also happens at a point in time, so they just carry on spending because there is very little else to do. But it is not easy, and quite rightly, you point out that it is a grim environment. Your 14% trading improvement in emerging markets is commendable on flat revenue growth. The brief country commentary in the update, ex-South Africa, does not seem to reflect that positivity, so what is driving the margin uplift? Well, South Africa is a big component of the EM segment, and we are getting profit growth in excess of revenue growth. We are getting profitability growth in Singapore and Malaysia. We are getting profitability growth in China. The Middle East is rebounding pretty nicely. Chile is doing very nicely, and Brazil is holding on.
Bernard Berson: So, although our commentary might be slightly negative, I think when you look at all of that, it is actually fine. But bear in mind, South Africa is a big chunk of that, and our South African business continues to outperform and do exceptionally well in a tough environment. Given the slight activity in M&A combined with lower CapEx, why not accelerate cash returns through buybacks?
Bernard Berson: As David said, CapEx is lumpy. It happens where it happens, and yeah, et cetera. It will probably accelerate slightly through the remainder of the year. But yes, point taken. The board has given us a mandate to effect share buybacks up to a certain price, and we will certainly be in the market to do that should the opportunity arise, because we think, at the correct level of pricing, it is a great opportunity. We are exceptionally comfortable and confident about the business and its prospects. I would not get too hung up. I know, obviously, the market is today, and they are obviously pretty grumpy with us that we only delivered 2.4% revenue growth.
Bernard Berson: I think that is a very short-sighted and short-term view. It is tough out there, and for us to eat out any growth and then squeeze profitability growth, I think just puts us in a fantastic opportunity, a fantastic position, when it does change, and there is no doubt it will change, will turn, and things will get better. So, I do not want to be negative. I think our teams have done an awesome job in a tough environment. It would be foolish to say that the environment is not tough. We are fighting hard, and I think we are outperforming, and I think we are taking market share, and we will continue to do that. So, we are comfortable with where we are at.
Bernard Berson: We can't control what we can't control. I can't control what the oil price is going to do and what consumer confidence is going to do and what inflation is going to do. What we can control and what our teams do control is how they run their business, their approach, their customer selection and retention criteria, their procurement capabilities, their efficiencies, and I think they've done an awesome job, and we're very happy with where we're at. I thank the team who's on the line here that's listening in. They've done an awesome job. To the rest of our 31,000 around the world, they've done an awesome job, and we'll continue to do that and continue to deliver. I'm not sure there are any further questions. Let me just check. Yeah, we've got some more. Emerging markets, revenue flat but profit up 14%, bridged by country.
Bernard Berson: What drives Okay, we've spoken about that. Many countries are delivering profit growth in excess of revenue growth. Is the US a place of interest for you? I guess you're asking that from a business point of view. We've had the view that if we're going to get into a market, and we've learned this the hard way, you want to be number one, number two, maybe you want to be number three with the optionality of becoming one or two. I don't think we could do that in the States. There's some exceptionally good operators in the States, exceptionally large operators in the States. I think we operate at a higher level of profit expectation than they do. They seem to have a far easier way of, what's the word, normalizing their results.
Bernard Berson: It's amazing how you can have restructure costs that are consistent from year to year over 10 years, but call them abnormal. Yeah, I'm just not sure how that all works. We can't be number one, two, or three in the States, so what's the point of being a small regional player or whatever? There are many other markets that excite us, and we are looking at some other markets. Whether that comes off or not, I'm not sure. There are some areas of opportunity where we think we can make a difference, we can be of scale, we can be a number one or number two player, and there's a huge amount of organic growth in many markets we still service. Our top 10 businesses out of the 21 we have account for about 95% of our profits.
Bernard Berson: We need to just get one, two, three, four of the others to start scaling up and getting to sufficient scale, and that starts changing the equilibrium a little bit as well. We still think there's plenty of opportunity in our current portfolio. There's plenty of opportunity of organic growth. There's plenty of opportunity of organic acquisition, which is very low risk, very low cost, and an easy way that we know the path of scaling up these businesses, rolling up businesses, consolidating, and being a sizable player. Let me see if there's any more. Yeah, one more. Seems like South Africa continues to generate above average trading profit growth given a relatively weak economic backdrop. Can you detail reasons for the sustained outperformance? I think we've got a very strong management team in South Africa.
Bernard Berson: They are a very consistent team who have been doing what they are doing for many, many years. They are very focused on what they do. They execute well. We are competing against price competitors, price fighters in the market, so it is not like we command a premium in any way, shape, or form. We compete well. We are getting market growth. I think we are getting share growth. We walk away from business when we need to walk away from business.
Bernard Berson: But I think we have just got a very well-run, structured, focused business who do what they do exceptionally well. I actually cannot find any other reason for it, and I do not think there is a more complicated answer to it, other than we have got a great team of people in place who have been doing what they are doing for many, many years, and hopefully will continue to. I think
David Cleasby: There is one about interest rates on the maturing loans. Around 2%. Some of these loans were the original ones we took out at the beginning of the Ukraine war. Slightly different interest rate environment at the time.
Bernard Berson: Okay, I think that brings us to the end. Thank you, everyone, for your attention. I am sorry if I sound a little bit negative, but I am not being negative even slightly. I am just trying to be realistic with you about the environment out there. It is a tough environment. We actually do not think it is going to improve in the next few months. Hopefully, in the next year or so, we will start seeing some improvement. I think we will see an upturn in consumer confidence when fuel prices come back down again. And when fuel prices come back down, that is an instant sugar hit to consumers. They get the cash straight in their pocket, they spend it, and it impacts our cost base quite quickly as well.
Bernard Berson: I think that is the next change that will come, is hopefully a reduction in fuel prices, in diesel prices, in energy prices, which will stimulate the business along. But overall, like I say, and I have said it a number of times, we are exceptionally happy with our performance. I think a 10% increase in HEPS in this environment is commendable, and the teams have done remarkably well to deliver that. Well done to all of them. Thank you, everybody, and we will see you at the end of February, I guess. All the best, and have a wonderful festive season. Thank you.
Operator: Goodbye.
