Good morning. Let me start with the headline. Our half-run performance shows a business that is delivering results and building confidence. We have grown sales and orders. We have opened more stores. We have continued to gain share across our key markets. And we have increased profit and cash generation. These data points matter because they show progress against the priorities we set out in March. We said we would focus on the core, strengthen the foundations and build disciplined, organic growth opportunities. Six months on, we are seeing early evidence that the strategy is working. Importantly, we are not relying on a market recovery to do the work for us. We are using the assets that make Domino's distinctive – our brand, our scale, our store network, our delivery capability, our data and digital capabilities and of course our supply chain. Those strengths give us the right to winning pizza, and they give us the right to expand into new occasions, delivering organic growth in a disciplined way. I'm now going to hand over to Andrew, who will take you through the financial performance in detail, and I will then come back to explain why I'm increasingly confident in the organic growth opportunity ahead.
Thanks, Nicola, and hello, everyone. As Nicola's just highlighted, this has been a strong first half, with positive progress across all key financials. Sales and orders grew in the period, feeding positively to all P&L metrics, with EBITDA up 3.6% and EPS up around 5%. Importantly, this earnings growth has contributed to improved free cash flow, up significantly to just over £50 million, which I will expand on later. As a consequence of this performance, together with our confidence in achieving our earlier expectations, we are proposing an interim dividend of 3.7 pence per share, up around 3% on last year. Looking at how that trading built through the half, as we reported back in April, we had a strong Q1, with both sales value and orders in like-for-like growth. Although Chicken Dip was launched in February, the Q1 performance was predominantly pizza In Q2, that positive momentum has continued, and whilst chicken has clearly contributed, importantly, pizza continued to grow, supported by the launch of our Italiano's range and the commencement of the World Cup tournament. And the conclusion of the World Cup contributed to continued positive trading in July. The growth in system sales drove uplift in all of the DPG revenue lines, with supply chain revenue up 2.5% on higher volumes and royalty revenues up 5.4%. The growth in corporate store sales principally reflects the victor acquisition, but importantly we've seen an improvement in underlying trading across our Irish businesses. Turning now to profit, as I mentioned earlier EBITDA grew just over 3.5% to £66m. driven by higher supply chain profit, royalties and corporate store income. The increase in depreciation and amortisation reflect investment in supply chain, corporate stores and IT systems and finance costs were higher reflecting the higher cost of our new bank facility that we entered into last year. Importantly, both of these increases are in line with our expectations and EPS was up around 5% reflecting the impact of last year's share buyback activity. Finally on costs, we are fully hedged on all key items for 2026 with some arrangements extending into 2027. Currently therefore we are not foreseeing any material cost or supply issues arising this year or next. Moving on to cash flow and debt, the increased earnings have positively contributed to cash flow in the period. We've clearly seen a significant working capital improvement, and we would expect some, but not all of that to reverse out in the second half year, with some improvements made in our underlying stock and creditor management. The other item of note is cash tax, reflecting a refund in respect of historical UK and Ireland's transfer pricing arrangements. Overall, therefore, even if we discount back the working capital, we've achieved a significant cash improvement in the period. On the balance sheet we are well financed. We have a 300 million RCF maturing in 2030 which is almost entirely undrawn with extension and accordion options within it. In addition we have 300 million pounds of US private placement notes. 200 million of these notes mature in July 2027 and our plan is to refinance this tranche by the end of the year with the final quantum and tenure to be determined. To summarise, this is a picture of strong, dependable cash generation underpinned by a strong balance sheet. We're also investing behind our growth, with full-year capex of around £35 million planned for this year. The majority of this spend will be into supply chain, principally reflecting the Avonmouth investment and other initiatives that Nicola will expand on later. Roughly £3 million is being invested into new stores in Ireland and around £8 million into e-commerce, funding digital innovation for the future. Looking forwards, we're anticipating a run rate level of investment of around £20 million in line with depreciation. And at this stage for 2027, anticipate an additional £5 million of growth capex in our supply chain operations. Finally, from me, our capital allocation framework is simple, but we have perhaps not explained it clearly historically. Our priorities are clear. First, invest in the core business to support sustainable growth, combining run rate maintenance capex, as I've just mentioned, together with growth capex underpinned by a rigorous discipline of a 20% minimum return hurdle rate. Secondly, maintaining a sustainable and progressive dividend is important, protecting the real value of the dividend with nominal increases loosely linked to inflation over time. Thereafter, any residual cash can then either be used to pay down debt or return to shareholders in the form of buybacks or special dividends. In evaluating this, we have a stated leverage target of 1.5 to 2.5 times, and we are at 2.3 times at the half year, reflecting the timing of the SCC investment. Our aim is to operate towards the lower end of that leverage range, and as such our primary focus is to use any excess cash after our two key priorities to pay down debt and reduce leverage. Importantly, as I have mentioned, we have a strong balance sheet, which provides us with flexibility to invest in the numerous organic opportunities under consideration but not yet fully evaluated. This is intended to be a clear and simple framework. Organic investment in the business, maintain the dividends and reduce debt and leverage over time. With that I'll hand back to Nicola to take you through the strategy.
Thanks Andrew. Now let me turn to the strategy and how we are building our organic growth opportunity. The framework is deliberately simple. More customers, by expanding our reach and attracting new cohorts. More often, by giving existing customers more reasons to choose dominoes across more occasions. And more efficiently, by improving productivity so we have the capacity and the funds to deliver our growth agenda. These are not disconnected initiatives. Chicken dip, loyalty, aggregators and supply chain productivity are designed to work together. They give us multiple, complementary routes to sustainable organic growth. Before I go through those in more detail though, I want to start with why Domino's is so well positioned to deliver. We are building from a position of real strength with one of the most recognised and loved consumer brands in the country. A brand that continues to go from strength to strength with unrivalled awareness and consideration. That strength is underpinned by four important foundations. a growing store network across the UK and Ireland unrivaled product quality combined with fast and consistent delivery remains a major competitive advantage a world-class supply chain capability with the capacity to support future growth and world-class franchisees with improving store economics So when we talk about growth opportunities like chicken, royalty, aggregators and productivity we are not starting from scratch We're taking assets that already exist at scale and making them work even harder. These are the foundations of our confidence, so let me bring that to life with a couple of examples. Our recent launch of a more premium pizza range, with a hand-stretched Italian-style crust, gave existing customers another reason to buy from us more often, while also encouraging new customers to try Domino's. The early response has been encouraging, with strong repeat rates showing that the range is resonating with customers. And we have a strong innovation pipeline across our core pizzas, sides and new categories. Our brand strength also gives us permission to show up in popular culture and benefit from big moments. Whether that was the Fiori vs. Mac Madoff fight on Netflix or the launch of our Shirtier for the World Cup, we have successfully tapped into moments of heightened demand. Customers know and trust what Domino's stands for. Great product, delivered quickly, that never fails to delight the crowd. So our foundations have never been stronger. Our ambition is now to build on them, creating even more reasons for customers to choose us, and in doing so, delivering our growth ambitions. As I said, the early signs are positive. We have a large and loyal customer base, and they are responding to the investments we've made in innovation, value, service, and our digital capability. We're seeing customer growth and increased frequency. More importantly, this means we're gaining share. These are important leading indicators. They show that the strategy is influencing customer behaviour in the way that we expected. And with a customer frequency of just under 4.5 times, encouraging customers to choose dominoes just one more time a year would have a meaningful impact on orders and value. And we believe we can give customers many more reasons to choose as a cost additional occasions. One clear proof point of that is Chicken Dip. Chicken Dip is much more than a product launch. It's an important strategic test of how far we can extend dominoes beyond the traditional pizza occasion. The logic is straightforward. Chicken is a large adjacent category. We can enter it using our existing system rather than building a new one, and we can do that without significant additional capital investment. What makes this opportunity attractive is that this is not about taking more share within pizza. It's about winning occasions where Domino's has not historically participated. The demand for high quality chicken with great flavour is continuing to grow, not just in the UK and Ireland, but globally. Historically, many chicken occasions have been enjoyed in store or restaurant. Increasingly, customers are looking for that same great chicken occasion at home, in the same way they already enjoy pizza. and that is why we can win we can offer customers an outstanding chicken product great flavour and deliver in under 25 minutes through our 1400 strong store network from a brand they already trust today we have just 4% share of a chicken market worth 3 billion the headroom is significant and the opportunity plays directly to our strengths in brand, marketing and digital engagement and as I said we can do this without significant capex or material changes to our in-store operations. It's the strength of our model that means we can add this occasion without compromising the pizza proposition that remains at the heart of dominoes. So this is not diversification away from pizza. It's a disciplined extension of dominoes into a broader set of takeaway occasions. The real test, of course, is customer behaviour. And this is where the early results are particularly encouraging. Our champion customers love having another reason to choose Domino's across additional occasions, with over 80% of customers who have tried it saying they're highly satisfied. They are buying from us more frequently since the launch of Chicken Dip. They are not substituting pizza for chicken. They are adding it to their baskets, which is helping drive higher average order values. We are also seeing orders from new, younger customers who are choosing Chicken Dip in more social occasions. So the launch is helping us broaden the appeal of the brand and build stronger relationships with the next generation of Domino's customers. Taken together, that gives us the confidence that Chicken Dip can become more than a successful launch. It has the potential to become a second growth engine for the business. Chicken Dip gives customers more reasons to choose this and helps us attract new customer cohorts. Lowest is an equally important strategic growth lever. It is about rewarding customers when they choose us more often and building a strong relationship with them over time. Loyalty drives frequency. As I showed earlier, even a small improvement in frequency, given the size of our customer base, can translate into significant order growth over time. We're really encouraged by the progress we've made with Domino's rewards and its ability to drive frequency. We've a strong pilot scheme with 2.2 million active customers. That's shown as the potential for the platform to drive deeper engagement, stronger retention and ultimately greater lifetime value, driving orders across all of our customer cohorts. It helps us turn a large customer base into a more engaged customer base. As you know, we have been building a permanent platform with Open Loyalty, a world-class loyalty provider, which will enable us to optimise the programme and unlock further value over time. And we are on track for the full national rollout of the new full scheme later this year, giving us the opportunity to engage our customers in a more meaningful way than the pilot allows. It will also help us attract new, direct customers through a more dedicated rewards experience. And in time, it will also give us richer data and a stronger platform for personalised marketing, helping us improve retention, increase frequency and lower acquisition costs. That's why loyalty is strategically important. It's not just about giving customers rewards, it's about creating a more relevant and more valuable relationship with them, an important long-term frequency engine in the business. So loyalty helps us deepen relationships with customers who already know us. Aggregators help us broaden our reach and access customers who are choosing to buy through different channels. The aggregator market continues to grow and Domino's has a clear opportunity to grow profitably by reaching customers and not actively in our own channel. These are customers who are often younger, more affluent, less price sensitive, and may prefer to order through their aggregator of choice. That makes aggregators an important route to incremental reach. The opportunity is not to just appear on these platforms, it's to use them in a way that expands our addressable market and brings new customers into the domino's experience. That's why we're approaching aggregators as a customer access channel, not as a replacement for our own channels. The focus is on profitable, incremental growth. Done well, this allows us to participate in a growing part of the delivery market while staying true to the strengths of our own model. This opportunity also leverages what we already have, our brand, our store network, our operating infrastructure and the strength of our delivery model. Hot food deliveries through aggregators can often be slower because there's a handover break between kitchen and driver. That handover break does not always guarantee that products arrive hot, delicious and in under 25 minutes on average the way we do. We address that gap by continuing to use our brilliant franchisee network to deliver the products ourselves. And the data shows that our strategy is working. Incrementality of customers and orders is high. Satisfaction with dominoes and aggregator platforms is strong. And we are seeing growth in our active customer base as a result. So aggregators are not just another channel, they're a disciplined way to reach incremental customers using a service model that is already a domino's strength. And the final lever I'm going to talk about today is productivity. Initiatives I've described earlier create customer growth and revenue opportunities. The sustainable growth only creates value if we can support it operationally and financially. That's why supply chain productivity is such an important part of the plan. Domino's is one of the strongest supply chain operations in the sector. It's a genuine competitive advantage. I often describe delivery as our superpower, and that applies not just to customer deliveries, but to our supply chain centre deliveries too. We operate with high service levels, high food availability, and high delivery accuracy. Every week, the network gives stores and franchisees all of the products they need to serve customers consistently and reliably. We also continue to make store deliveries more sustainable. By the end of this year, a quarter of our units in our distribution fleet will be lower emission using a combination of CNG, HVO and electric vehicles. The customer never sees the supply chain, but they feel the benefit every time the product is available, the order is accurate and the delivery is on time. Our investment in SCC5 has strengthened that capability further, giving us additional capacity, resilience and efficiency. That gives us the operational base from which to drive the next wave of productivity. And productivity allows us to invest behind growth while maintaining financial discipline. As I shared in March, we've identified a wide range of productivity opportunities across the business. Seven are currently underway across various sites ranging from production automation that increases throughput to warehouse automation and automated de-boxing, picking and loading processes, which collectively will deliver cost savings in 2026 and further benefits in 2027. So as we talk about sustainable growth we are equally focused on how that growth is delivered efficiently, profitably and with discipline. So let me bring this together. Returning to the framework I set out earlier more customers, more often, more efficiently. Chicken Bit gives us a route to more occasions and new customer cohorts. Loyalty gives us a route to higher frequency and deeper relationships. Aggregators give us a route to incremental reach. And Productivity gives us the ability to support that growth efficiently and profitably. None of this depends on a single big bet. These are practical, executable levers. They use the strengths we already have in the business. And together, they give us multiple routes to sustainable, organic growth. In Pizza, we continue to strengthen our leadership position. that demonstrates the resilience of the core business and the effectiveness of our investment in innovation, value and customer experience. In Chicken, the early performance of Chicken Dip gives us confidence that Domino's can participate in a broader set of customer occasions. And across the wider takeaway market, we're increasing our relevance with consumers and gaining share of the bigger pie. These proof points are important. They show the strategy moving from intent into execution. we're strengthening the core business we are expanding the addressable market we are building multiple routes to long-term growth I'll close by returning to the word confidence there are three reasons I feel confident looking ahead first, half one gives us encouraging evidence that those actions are now translating into performance the core business is performing we're delivering sales growth, order growth, profit growth and strong cash generation and gaining share Second, we have multiple organic growth levers across the short and medium term and we're beginning to see evidence that they are also working. And third, we have a strong pipeline of further opportunities still under evaluation, giving us confidence that there is more growth potential to unlock for dominoes. I look forward to bringing those back to you as they become more fully formed. Importantly, we remain confident in delivering our full year expectations. Thank you.
