Lsl Property Services Aktie

Hello, and welcome to LSL's half year results presentation. Thank you for joining us. I'm Adam Castleton, Group Chief Executive. I'm joined by David Tilak, our Group CFO. I'll start by taking you through the key highlights from the first half. David will then take you through the financial performance in more detail before I come back to talk about the opportunities ahead.

So let's start with the highlights. I think there are 3 things to take from our first half results. Firstly, we delivered further profit and margin growth. And importantly, this was achieved in markets which developed broadly as we expected. They were not particularly strong, but nor have we seen the deterioration that some of the wider market commentary might suggest. Against that backdrop, the group has continued to perform well.

Secondly, we launched our group-wide transformation program focused initially on finance and procurement. We expect this to deliver at least GBP 5 million of annualized benefits with the benefits building through 2027. Transformation will continue to be an important part of how we strengthen LSL. Looking ahead, technology is likely to become an increasingly important focus as we consider how we can use it more effectively to simplify processes, improve how we work and support our businesses.

We make these changes from a position of strength. It is more than cost reduction. It is about creating a simpler, more effective LSL, making better use of our scale and capabilities and providing a stronger platform for future growth. And thirdly, we remain on track for the full year. Trading since the period end has developed as anticipated, and our expectations for 2026 remain unchanged. So overall, a good first half, further financial progress, a significant transformation program now underway and confidence in our expectations for the year.

What I think is important on this slide is not any of these numbers, it's the combination. Profits are growing, margins are expanding, cash conversion remains high and our return on capital employed has increased again to 36%, around twice the historic level for LSL. That reflects the very different shape of the group today. We are capital-light. We have structurally stronger margins and the business generates significant cash. And importantly, our revenue mix is much more resilient than many people might assume. The majority of group income is not directly dependent on residential property transactions, given our significant income streams from lettings, remortgaging, platform fees and other recurring or repeatable revenue streams.

Our resilient model means we can continue to invest selectively, where we see attractive returns, while at the same time, returning capital to shareholders. In the first half, we returned more than GBP 12 million through dividends and share buybacks, while maintaining a strong balance sheet. And we still see further opportunity. Our group margin is now 17% compared with 16% in the first half last year. Our transformation program supports our ambition to move that above 20%. So for me, this is increasingly a high-return, cash-generative and resilient business with further opportunity to improve its economics. That is a very attractive combination.

Turning briefly to our markets. Overall, they developed broadly as we expected during the first half. The residential sales market was slightly smaller year-on-year as expected, largely because of the Stamp Duty-related pull forward in the comparative period. Purchase transactions remaining around long-term averages with some softness in London, where our exposure is relatively limited. The mortgage market continued to recover and remortgaging was particularly strong as significant volumes of fixed rate products reach maturity.

That is important for LSL because remortgaging supports activity across both financial services and surveying. Lettings also remain resilient. We have successfully supported the implementation of the Renters' Rights changes across our network. Contrary to some of the more negative commentary, we've not seen evidence of significant landlord withdrawal. So overall, fairly ordinary markets, broadly as we expected and a backdrop against which we have continued to perform.

Alongside the financial performance, we've remained very active commercially across the group. In surveying, we have renewed important lender contracts, acquired further allocation wins and continue to develop our AVM proposition. In estate agency franchising, we've expanded the network, acquired letting books, added recurring income and invested further in areas such as conveyancing. We've also completed selective bolt-on acquisitions, also in financial services, where they improve our capabilities or strengthen our market position.

And Pivotal Growth has continued to grow profitably, building scale through further acquisitions and self-financing. The common theme is discipline. We are investing where we can strengthen our businesses, deepen our relationships and generate attractive returns. So even fairly ordinary markets, there has been a lot of meaningful commercial progress across LSL. We've also been changing how LSL operates. The transformation program is the most visible example. It is about simplifying the way we work, making better use of great capabilities, group capabilities and reducing unnecessary duplication. But there's a broader change taking place as well. We're working more collaboratively across businesses, which historically operated independently.

We've strengthened management and expertise. We are improving communication across the group and continuing to develop a more accountable and connected culture. We've also worked hard to improve how LSL is understood externally. The business has changed significantly over recent years, but market understanding had not always kept pace. We've increased engagement with both existing and prospective investors, and we are seeing much greater interest in the group and in the opportunity ahead. So there's a lot happening beneath the headline financial performance commercially, organizationally and in how we operate as one group.

I'll now hand over to David. David joined us at the beginning of the year and has settled into the business extremely quickly. His experience in transformation is already proving valuable with measurable benefits. He'll now take you through the financial performance in more detail, including the economics of the transformation program. David?

Thank you, Adam. I will now take you through the group's financial performance and the results from each of our divisions. I'll then cover the transformation program, cash generation, capital allocation and our outlook for the full year. Let me begin with the group's headline financial results. The group delivered well in the first half. Revenue increased by 3% to GBP 92.3 million. Our underlying operating profit increased by 11% to GBP 15.9 million.

Profit grew materially ahead of revenue, lifting our underlying operating margin by 130 basis points to just over 17%. This is our highest first half margin for more than 15 years. The group also remains highly cash generative with operating cash conversion of 91% over the last 12 months. Return on capital employed increased from 31% to a record 36%, demonstrating the attractive returns generated by our capital-light business model.

Adjusted diluted earnings per share increased by 14% to 11.7p, benefiting from higher profit after tax and our share buybacks. Taken together, these results show that stronger margins and disciplined capital allocation are translating into improved shareholder returns. I will now explain the principal movements in our underlying operating profit. We started with underlying operating profit of GBP 14.4 million in the first half of '25 and delivered GBP 15.9 million this year. That represents an increase of GBP 1.5 million or 11%.

Changes in our underlying markets contributed GBP 0.7 million with stronger remortgaging and product transfers more than offsetting lower housing transactions. Improved performance across our businesses contributed a further GBP 1.7 million over and above the market impact, and I'll explain these drivers as I take you through the divisions. Salary inflation and higher National Insurance combined with GBP 2 million of costs. We also invested a further GBP 0.9 million, principally in the financial services technology platform. Cost management actions contributed GBP 1.9 million, including a further GBP 0.5 million reduction in our central costs. The key point is that our operating actions absorb both wage inflation and investment, allowing us to deliver double-digit profit growth and significant margin expansion.

I will now turn to the divisional performance, starting with Surveying & Valuation. Surveying & Valuation comprises 3 closely aligned businesses. These are our core B2B valuations operations, our B2C survey business and Asset Management, which provides property recovery and specialist receivership services to lenders. The division delivered another strong performance. Revenue increased by 6%, underlying operating profit increased by 11% and margins improved to approximately 23%.

Within B2B valuations, we successfully renewed every contract during the period and secured additional allocations from 2 major lenders. The B2C survey business also continued to grow with strong customer satisfaction reflected in its 4.8 Trustpilot score. Asset Management was a standout performer with revenue increasing by approximately 44% to GBP 3.7 million and an operating margin of more than 50%.

Although it remains relatively small within the division today, is already highly profitable and has clear potential for further growth. Alongside our proprietary data and automated valuation capabilities, it also gives the division several routes to further profitable growth. I will now turn to Financial Services. Mortgage lending performed well in the first half with revenues increasing by 8%, keeping pace with the market and maintaining or increasing our share across our principal mortgage channels.

Adviser productivity also improved and overall revenue per adviser increased by 12%, although product mix reduced the average fee per completion. Revenue reduced by 3% and underlying operating profit reduced by GBP 0.9 million, principally reflecting the investment in the new CRM and lower adviser numbers, including the departure of protection-only firms last year. There are clear areas for improvement, including increasing protection penetration and driving adviser productivity. With around 12% of all U.K. mortgages flowing through our adviser network, we have genuine scale and reach. At its core, this is a very good business, and our priority is to translate that position into stronger growth and returns.

Turning now to estate agency franchising. This division delivered an excellent set of results. U.K. housing transactions were 4% lower in the period versus the prior year, which had benefited from the Stamp Duty changes in April '25. Against that stronger comparator, divisional revenue increased by 2% to GBP 13.2 million. Underlying operating profit increased by 24%, with the margin expanding approximately 6 percentage points to a record first half level of 30%. This demonstrates significant resilience and operating leverage. The managed lettings portfolio increased by 4%, while average income per managed property increased by 3%, strengthening the division's recurring revenue base. We are also investing selectively for future growth. 6 new branches and 7 supported letting book acquisitions expanded the network, while the purchase of the National Search Service and investment in Collaborative Conveyancing strengthened the conveyancing proposition.

Having covered the 3 divisions, I will now turn to the group transformation program. When I look across LSL, I see a great deal of capability, but also a clear opportunity to bring the group closer together to make it work more effectively. Transformation is a key underpin of delivering One LSL, a simpler, more connected and more profitable organization. My immediate priority is our support functions, which have historically operated independently within each of the businesses. We are redesigning the underlying processes, removing duplication and creating better broader roles for our colleagues.

I am confident in our ability to deliver this. We have put together an experienced team that combines a deep understanding of LSL with specialist transformation expertise, and we remain on track to deliver GBP 5 million of annualized savings progressively through 2027. Over the medium to long term, I believe there is a wider opportunity to use technology across our front office operations to improve productivity and bring us closer to our customers. We will pursue that opportunity with discipline and invest where we are confident that returns will be compelling.

I will now turn to the group's cash generation. The group remains highly cash generative with operating cash conversion of 91% over the last 12 months. We began the period with net cash of GBP 27.8 million, and cash from operations contributed just over GBP 17 million. We invested GBP 9 million in acquisitions and capital expenditure. Working capital and depreciation movements represented a further GBP 6.4 million of outflow.

The next line on the bridge combines the GBP 10 million repayment of loan notes with GBP 1.9 million of exceptional expenditure and GBP 3.4 million of taxes paid. Together, these items produced a net cash inflow of GBP 4.7 million, taking our cash before shareholder distributions to GBP 34.2 million. We then returned just over GBP 12 million to our shareholders. After these investments and distributions, we ended the period with a net cash of GBP 22 million.

That cash generation and balance sheet strength support the capital allocation framework I will cover next. Our capital allocation framework remains unchanged. Our first priority is organic investment that can improve the performance and long-term value of our existing businesses. This includes investment in technology, capabilities and the transformation program. Our second priority is selective or inorganic investment through acquisitions and related opportunities that expand our existing businesses or add capabilities.

Alongside investment for growth, we maintain an attractive and sustainable dividend. Our dividend policy is based on 30% of underlying operating profit. We have maintained the interim dividend at 4p per share. We also continue to return capital through share buybacks. We completed the previous GBP 7 million program in January and immediately commenced a new program of up to GBP 12 million, which remains on track to be completed by January '27.

The balance between investing in the future of the group and returning capital to shareholders will reflect the opportunities available rather than a fixed allocation formula. We will continue to assess each use of capital against its expected return, while preserving the balance sheet strength that gives us the capacity to act when an attractive opportunity arises. I will finish with our outlook for the year.

Our businesses continue to perform in line with expectations. For '26, we expect increased revenue and another year of profit growth. This would represent the group's fourth consecutive year of profit growth. We continue to expect operating cash conversion between 75% and 100% together with capital expenditure between GBP 3 million and GBP 5 million. The group has strong market positions, high cash generation and a clear route to further margin improvement. These characteristics underpin our confidence in the outlook and our ability to generate attractive long-term returns.

With that, I hand you back to Adam and for the strategic and operational update.

Thank you, David. What you've heard is a business that continues to deliver financially with strong cash generation and high returns and where we've now launched a transformation program that will improve the economics and capabilities of the group. But I want to finish on why I remain excited about the opportunity ahead. LSL has a very distinct position across the U.K. residential property mortgage ecosystem. We work with lenders, mortgage brokers, state agencies, landlords, buyers, sellers and homeowners. We have strong relationships and capabilities across each of those areas.

Historically, those businesses have been run independently. One LSL is about connecting them much more effectively, making better use of our relationships, our expertise, our data and technology across the group. We've already started that journey. The transformation program is part of it, but it is broader than that. It is about getting more value from the strengths we already have.

So to finish, we've delivered another good first half. We remain on track for the year, and we are continuing to improve the quality and economics of the group. We have strong businesses, a highly cash-generative model and a growing opportunity to create more value by bringing those strengths together. My conviction in the opportunity for LSL remains very high. Thank you.

We have just played out the prerecorded results presentation, and we'll shortly be moving to a live Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand over to Adam to say a few words before starting the Q&A.

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very much for coming to this call. For those of you who haven't already seen the video, I hope you found that informative. I'm looking forward to answering your questions. First thing I want to say it's very important this meeting for us in the last year, I put an increasing amount of effort into getting the story of LSL across more widely into the market and more understood. We're already seeing the benefit of that. And the retail video conference we have now is a very, very important part of our IR strategy. So thank you. I'm looking forward to now moving to your Q&A.

Thank you, Adam. Let's start with a question on our marketplaces. So what's your view of the market so far?

Well, the markets, there's a lot of press and press in the U.K. can be quite doom and gloom. The reality is the markets have been pretty resilient. If we look back to our budget that we set for ourselves internally, what we expected the market to be, and we said that last October. The market has pretty much been what we expected, notwithstanding all of the bumps along the way, whether it would be unfortunately, war declared, change of Prime Ministers, interest rates heading in the opposite direction to what people expected.

But the markets have actually been pretty resilient through the year, and we expect the markets to finish flattish for the year, a little bit down in residential exchange, a little bit up in lending and pretty much what we expected, so resilient. So the important thing about that is that we're not relying on market help -- we wish there would be some. It'd be nice to have some help behind us. But actually, it's not been particularly supportive, and we're moving on with resilient markets, and we probably expect the same next year as well. So not particularly helpful, but extremely resilient at the same time.

Thank you. Can you provide more detail on the transformation plan you've just announced in the interims? Could it materially change LSL's earnings over the next few years? And what do you think it could do to margins?

Yes. I think the first and most important thing is we've announced a transformation program. One of the questions, I think that we picked up is someone saying another transformation program. I think this is an interesting one because we've -- off the back of a very strong base and from a position of strength, we've decided to change the way that we operate as a group. That's important. We're not doing this from a position of weakness. We're not doing this from a position of crisis.

So we've set out to change the way we operate by bringing together the strengths of this group by leveraging the strengths of this group by operating in a much more efficient way. So #1, that will allow us to reduce costs, and we just announced GBP 5 million. But secondly, it will mean that going forward, the group will be much more effective to deliver both what we do today, but also new propositions in the future. So I'll pass over to David, perhaps he'll give a little bit of further detail for you on the transformation program that we've announced and some of the things that we may be looking at next.

Yes. Thank you, Adam. So look, I mean, answering the question, there are -- we have 3 very strong divisions, each with market leadership positions, each highly cash generative, strong margins today. But we do -- but they have been operated as 3 individual businesses throughout their time with us. We're now looking at how do we bring them together, not just for cost efficiency, but for the effectiveness across LSL as a group.

So yes, there is a cost-out element to it, but there's also incremental opportunities that we see bringing them closer together. So that's one. We said at the prelims that our first milestone will be to push through 20% and we still -- we're tracking very well against that. And over the last 6 months, we've built the transformation team. We had great engagement across LSL, the talent within LSL are part of that transformation program and look forward to giving you more details as we execute through the first GBP 5 million.

Thank you. Another question here. Do you think lettings could become a significantly bigger part of the group over time?

I think we'll see lettings steadily increasing. It's a very stable market. We haven't seen the large outflows certainly within our book of landlords coming out of the market. So it's very stable. We expect to steadily grow our lettings presence with what we call assisted lettings purchases where we help franchisees to purchase lettings books, which then become part of their business and then become part of our royalty stream. So I think you'll expect to see us continue that program, which will steadily show that we're increasing the number of properties under management for this company.

Great. Thank you. Next question Mortgage revenue increased -- mortgage revenue per adviser increased by 12%. What's driving that? And how much further can adviser productivity improve?

Mortgage productivity increased. We've maintained our position in the mortgage market extremely well. We maintained our market share, and we grew in line or just above the market. I think that will be a good performance compared to anybody out there. The productivity increased mainly because some of the less productive advisers in a slightly slower market would have exited. So we keep our more productive advisers within the network.

I think that's a very nice thing to have. But I think over time, we should be increasing the productivity by increasing the number of products per adviser and getting better penetration, for example, of protection.

Thank you. Next question, perhaps for David. With GBP 22 million of net cash and strong cash generation, what's the best use of cash surplus from here? And can you describe your capital allocation policy?

Certainly. So I mean, first of all, LSL is highly cash generative, and that's not by accident. That's by design. We are structurally capital-light, and you see that in the 36% return on capital employed in the first half. We have a capital allocation policy. It's a 4-step policy, and they are prioritized. So the first is we will always invest in organic capital allocation. That's our #1. And that means scaling our existing operations, making them more profitable. So that could be small bolt-ons that could be investing in transformation, for example.

Then secondly, we have inorganic, and we have strict hurdle rates. We have a history of delivering very well against those small M&A acquisitions. And we'll continue to scout for good opportunities, but they will be manageable. And then we get into the second half of the capital allocation, which is the returns to shareholders. And we have a dividend policy, which is 30% operating profit after tax and finance charges. And we've been paying at slightly higher rates. And even at the interims, we're still above our 30% threshold, and we'll continue that. It's maintainable. It's a sustainable level of dividend.

And then finally, we look to give back surplus cash via at this moment, share buybacks, and we increased that from GBP 7 million to GBP 12 million this year. And we'll continue to look at the right balance. And you would have seen in the first half, it was fairly balanced between investing in the company, 1 and 2 and give back being 3 and 4. That's not formulaic, but it's a balancing act that we'll continue to strive to achieve.

Thank you. Just picking up your point on M&A, perhaps this is a broader question here. What's the view or strategy on M&A for the group?

M&A for the group. This year, we've demonstrated, David mentioned small bolt-ons. We've demonstrated our desire to bring in smaller acquisitions where they make sense and where they either are easy bolt-ons or where they enhance our strategic ambitions or our proposition. So a couple of those examples this year. We brought into the estate agency franchising fold, a small 7-firm network on the South Coast. We're delighted to bring that brand in. The owner is very keen to be part of the LSL story, and that will be an example of a bolt-on.

We've also this year invested in a digital conveyancing firm, which will both help our existing proposition to our franchisees, but also give us the opportunity to improve the proposition further to potentially monetize it across the group. So in terms of smaller bolt-ons or tactical, we continue to do those. We're delighted. The returns are very high because obviously, at those levels, the pricing pressure is lower.

We always look at larger acquisitions. Part of the reason that we hold a degree of surplus cash is if ever any opportunistic medium-sized acquisitions come along, we're able to do that out of cash, more rare, and we'll be very, very careful about those because most larger deals do come potentially at a premium. And when it comes to much larger deals, again, I'm aware of those in the market. We'll always be very careful about those. We never say never, but they'll be looked at each time on their own basis. But our main focus is smaller, what I call either infill strategic or infill proposition or bolt-ons where we can take on a firm in what we do and move on. Other acquisitions we look at selectively on their own basis.

Thank you. Another broader question. LSL ultimately benefits from people moving house, taking out mortgages and having properties valued. What do you think of the current regulatory environment? And how is that affecting the business?

Thank you. First thing I think I would say is that regulation as a large business with know-how within its people, within its processes, it is our friend. So regulation is our friend. One of the examples of that this year was the Renters' Rights Bill that came in, very, very complicated. A lot of provisions were brought in at the very last minute when we received the detail at about 5 minutes, 2 minutes or 5 minutes past midnight, I can't remember which, on the [ eve ] basically of when that became legislation.

And we were able with our knowledge and expertise to bring all of our franchisees along on the journey with something that's quite complicated. That incidentally brings in opportunities for independent owners of lettings properties, who are now more attracted to the proposition that we can give with all the expertise and know-how we have. So that's been actually something that's gone very well. We haven't seen disruption. We've heard of some potentially in London, but we haven't seen the disruption that we've read about sometimes in the press.

Secondly, this year, and we just heard the final view from the FCA. We have the interim review of the protection review and now the final one, which sets out that in the U.K., we are underprotected, I think 58% underprotected. We've got the opportunity there to drive our penetration to increase the productivity, as I mentioned earlier. So generally, the environment is helpful for a larger player like us who's got the expertise.

The final point, which is to come is the government would like the buying and selling process to be more efficient, and we certainly support that. I think that's a long journey, but our combination of data about our property, data about the end customers and the mortgage customers, I think will be very helpful in terms of bringing together upfront information that allows the process to be much quicker. So all in all, we're a business well set up for the regulatory changes and broadly, they're supportive of a company like ours.

Thank you. Next question is on AVMs. So what's your view on AVMs? And how do you think the progression will be going forward?

So AVMs, I'm sure everybody knows Automated Valuation Model. This is one of the 3 types of products that are provided for valuations, physical, remote and AVM. AVM has existed now since round about the global financial crisis in any meaningful way. And it's slowly been increasing. So now it's been and has been for a little while, around about 30% of the total mortgage approval market. It's growing slowly. We haven't seen any discontinuity at the moment.

And 2 years ago, we started and successfully tested, trialed and launched our own AVM with one lender, and we're trialing it with others as well. We think the combination of physical, remote and AVMs, which we provide lenders is a winning strategy.

Thank you. There are no more questions at this time. Unless there are any last-minute questions. Perhaps I'll hand over to you, Adam, for some final words.

Thank you. Listen, I'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak to you. Obviously, it's an anonymous call. We're always delighted to meet people face-to-face. If you have further questions, you can contact our IR department, who would just set up anew to really push and drive the story into the market and a story which will be increasingly well understood for LSL and the opportunities we have ahead of us.

So thank you very much for your time. David and I thank you all for your interest and for your support, and we look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thank you.

Thank you to the management team for joining us today. That concludes the LSL investor presentation. Please take a moment to complete a short survey following this event. The recording of this presentation will be made available on Engage Investor. I hope you enjoyed today's webinar.

Welcome to LSL's preliminary results presentation. Thank you for joining us today. I'll start by talking through the key highlights. David will then take you through the financial results in more detail. I'll then come back and talk about the opportunities ahead and how we see the next phase of growth for LSL. Last year, I set out clear priorities: performance, technology and data, aligning the collective strengths of the group and empowering an accountable culture. In 2025, we have delivered strong progress against those priorities.

We also continue to build for the future. Having spent a year in the role, my conviction in the opportunity for LSL has only increased. Today, I want to demonstrate 2 things to you: strong delivery and a platform for future growth. In 2025, we delivered on our promises with profit growth of 17% to GBP 32.6 million. This was a broad-based performance with profit up in all 3 divisions. There was margin expansion up to a record 18%, which brings in sight our next milestone of 20%.

With focused cost discipline, we also reduced our central costs. And with 90% cash conversion, bringing 35% return on capital employed and increased absolute returns to shareholders. Our markets improved in 2025, although they remain slightly below long-term averages. We performed well, and we maintained our strong market positions. You'll see the graphs on the slide. The first one is about residential sales. Residential sales in the market were up 10%. And you can see the pull forward in Q1 due to the stamp duty changes and H2 was normalized.

We outperformed the market with our residential revenue up 12% and our residential pipelines were strong at the end of the year against bursting pipelines the year before in the lead up to the stamp duty changes. Mortgage approvals were up 10% as was surveying revenue. And in the second graph, you can see approvals by quarter for 2022, the averages for recent years and 2025. Whilst the market remains around 4% below long-term average, our surveying income per day is at record levels, supported by contract and allocation wins and B2C growth.

The mix of product transfers to remortgage is slowly recovering back to norms, which is very helpful for us. Mortgage lending was up 19%, and we delivered an increase of 23%, driving our mortgage market share up to 12%, which is 1 in 8 residential mortgages in the U.K. Our markets were resilient, all in all, given the uncertainties throughout the year, such as tariffs that were introduced over the Atlantic and the lead up to the U.K. autumn budget. It looks like London property markets may have been adversely affected in Q4 compared to the rest of the country. LSL is not exposed to the London market in our estate agency franchise business.

It is my pleasure now to introduce David Tilak, who joined us in January and is already making a very positive impact on the business. David comes with incredible experience of delivering transformation and turning strategy into performance. Anybody who's been on the finance leadership program created by Jack Welch of General Electric has my vote. Over to you, David.

Thanks, Adam, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for the warm welcome. It's been a real pleasure joining LSL and working with you over the past few months. Since joining in January, I spent a lot of time getting under the skin of the business, meeting customers, lender partners and teams across the group. That's given me a valuable perspective on how the business operates day-to-day, where we create value, where we have further opportunities to improve our returns. I've been particularly impressed by the capability and commitment across the organization and by the wealth of opportunities we have to continue building on the strengths of the business.

My focus as CFO is to ensure that operational strength consistently translates into high-quality earnings, strong cash conversion and disciplined capital allocation. The results we're presenting today reflect the progress we're making. Now I'll turn to Page 8. Before examining the drivers of performance, it's worth briefly stepping back to reflect on the progress the group has made over the past few years. 2023 market conditions were clearly different, and LSL was a different business. 2025 represents the second full year of results since the transformation of the business.

Since the franchising of the Estate Agency business, we've continued quietly to strengthen LSL. The group now operates with lower capital intensity, stronger cash generation and is more resilient. Against that backdrop, 2025 represents another year of strong progress. Compared to '24, revenue grew by 6%, underlying operating profit increased by 17% and margins reaching 18%, the highest level we have achieved in over 15 years. Importantly, we view this margin level as a solid foundation rather than the ceiling. There remains meaningful opportunities to improve productivity, streamline operations and strengthen our commercial execution.

Exiting '25, we have momentum. Second half revenues grew compared to the first half in every division, whilst group operating profit was up 20%. Looking forward, our first milestone realizing just some of the available opportunities is to push our margins through 20%. Turning to Page 9. I'll now provide a walk of the key drivers of what was a year of strong profit delivery. Underlying operational performance improved by GBP 5 million, reflecting a combination of improved market conditions and operational execution. Markets were more active in '25, providing the opportunity to grow volumes, and we executed on those opportunities.

Further, we grew market share in surveying and to a lesser extent, in the Financial Services division. In addition to scaling volumes, we're able to realize GBP 1.1 million of pricing benefit. This reflects the value our lenders place on the relationship as well as us realizing post-integration commercial opportunities. Such a strong underlying performance enabled us to continue to invest in technology and capabilities.

We invested GBP 3.6 million to advance our core platform technology, including the development of our broker operation platform in financial services and the AVM in surveying as well as strengthening a number of our teams. So in summary, volume, share and pricing drivers contributed GBP 8.7 million of benefit, and we invested GBP 3.6 million. In terms of cost reduction, we delivered GBP 1.9 million of cost efficiencies across the group, primarily through reduced professional fees, streamlining IT and some targeted headcount reductions. There are clearly more opportunities to drive meaningful efficiencies across the group, and it's an area I'm keenly focused on.

Turning to Pivotal. Our joint venture contributed GBP 1.7 million of profit growth year-on-year, and it's pleasing to see them scale. Finally, we absorbed 2 headwinds. Changes to national insurance increased costs by around GBP 1.5 million. And following our previously announced decision to exit protection-only firms, we absorbed a year-on-year profit headwind of GBP 2.2 million. Taking these elements together, the group delivered a 17% increase in underlying profit.

Let me now turn to the performance of the individual divisions. For those of you following online, that's Page 10. Starting with Surveying and Valuation. The division delivered 10% revenue growth, benefiting from both increased mortgage market activity with overall mortgage approvals up 10% as well as by growing share by 100 basis points. Importantly, volume growth was achieved as a result of excellent execution, winning new contracts as well as increasing allocations with existing customers. The B2C channel grew by 16% during the year. Historically, this channel has helped us level load surveying capacity. And during the year, we took a further step forward, scaling the business by continuing to invest in the underlying capabilities.

Margins were slightly lower than prior year for 2 reasons. First, as previously advised, in '24, we benefited from unusually low levels of variable compensation, particularly in the first quarter. Secondly, during '25, the division absorbed targeted investment in the development and launch of our AVM platform, along with the expansion of data science capabilities. In support of margin improvement, operational productivity notably improved during the year with jobs per surveyor increasing by 8%. This was the result of a program of time optimization across the surveying workforce and the development and embedding of new productivity tools.

To summarize the year, the division delivered strong revenue growth, launched and commercialized the AVM whilst meaningfully driving productivity. Turning to Financial Services. The mortgage market strengthened during the year with total mortgage lending increasing by around 19% to GBP 291 billion. The division continues to focus on the quality of the network, concentrating on small and medium composite advisory firms, which represents around 80% of the adviser market. While the total number of advisers reduced 6% during the year, this was impacted by the loss of protection-only advisers.

The underlying adviser base was still down, although in a flat market. A focus on improving adviser productivity enabled us to grow mortgage fees by 19%, along with slightly growing our market share. General Insurance revenues further increased by around 9%, supported by stronger purchase and remortgage activity during the year, whilst protection revenue was clearly impacted by the exit from protection-only firms.

In summary, total revenues grew 1% year-on-year, whilst underlying profit increased by 28%, with margin expanding by around 470 basis points. This, however, includes our share of the JV. Excluding the contribution, operating profit grew by around 8%, with operating margin increasing by around 120 basis points despite continued investment.

Finally, Estate Agency delivered a resilient performance overall. Whilst divisional revenue was down 2%, underlying profits grew 6%. In residential sales, market volumes increased by 10%, whilst the division outperformed, growing revenues by 12%. In lettings, the market remained largely flat to slightly down, and our divisional revenues were broadly similar year-on-year. Within the division, land and new homes created a GBP 1 million revenue headwind following the loss of a major MOD contract, along with a slight downturn in the general sales activity.

As a result of a targeted restructuring, the division was able to offset this headwind, increasing its total margin by around 2 percentage points to 31%. A key focus for the division is growing lettings royalty income, which we see as low risk and annuity-like in nature. During the year, we supported the acquisition of 10 letting books, representing around 1,400 properties. It is our intent to continue to build that recurring income base over time.

Turning to Page 11. As you can see from the cash walk, LSL is highly and consistently cash generative. The group delivered GBP 33.5 million of cash flow from operations with a cash conversion of around 90%, comfortably within our stated range of 75% to 100%. Working capital saw a modest outflow of around GBP 1.7 million, largely reflecting the timing of trade payables. Looking ahead, we see opportunities to further strengthen our working capital discipline, including embedding clearer working capital metrics across the group to help drive stronger cash performance. Loan notes to the JV Pivotal was subsequently repaid just after year-end.

Adjusting for that, net cash would have been GBP 37.8 million. It's important to note that we do not expect to provide any further funding for the JV now that they have sourced external debt. Capital expenditures during the year was GBP 4.3 million, primarily related to the investment in technology, whilst a further GBP 2.7 million was invested to secure the 10 letting books.

Turning to shareholder returns. Our dividend remained in line with previous years, and we elected to introduce an enhanced share buyback program. Taken together, dividends and share buybacks represented just under 50% of cash flow from operations during the year, while still allowing us to meaningfully invest in the business.

Turning to Page 12. We have a strong proven track record of achieving attractive returns on our investments with our return on capital employed growing to 35%. We have a clear capital allocation policy that helps guide our decisions. Alongside organic investment, we remain open to selective inorganic opportunities, assessed against a clear return threshold and governed by disciplined due diligence. Assuming dividends continue at prior year levels, taken together with the recently announced share buyback program, this would represent a cash return yield of over 9% based on our market capitalization at the beginning of the year.

Overall, our focus remains on deploying capital where it best generates attractive long-term returns for our shareholders. Turning to Page 13. Finally, a few comments on our outlook for 2026. Trends so far this year gives us confidence in the performance of the business, although we recognize that the broader macroeconomic environment remains uncertain. Based on current conditions, we expect to deliver performance in line with current market expectations for the year. From a cash perspective, we expect cash conversion to remain towards the mid- to upper end of our stated range. As in previous years, performance is expected to be weighted towards the second half, reflecting the normal pattern of activity in our markets. With that, I'll hand you back to Adam to continue the presentation.

Thank you, David. So it's a strong financial delivery across the group and opportunities to take us forward. In 2025, we've been building the foundation for LSL's next phase. We've strengthened the platform of the business. We built scale and deepened market positions. We've improved collaboration across the group. We've invested in technology and data, and we've strengthened the culture and leadership. These foundations position us for the next phase of growth.

In the next phase, we expect to take advantage of changing markets, further leverage our strengths, all with our priority to drive higher returns. Before talking about the next phase, it's worth reminding ourselves of the strengths we start from at LSL. We are capital-light. We're a highly cash-generative model with strong market positions across the housing and mortgage ecosystem. We have long-standing relationships with our partners. The question now is how we build from that platform to drive the next phase of performance.

Structural changes are taking place across our markets. Customer expectations are evolving. There's demand for integrated advice, partners are seeking scale and trusted relationships. Technology and AI are transforming the journey and regulation is increasingly complex. These structural changes play to our strengths, further our competitive advantage and create opportunities we are already beginning to realize.

To convert the opportunities into performance, we will leverage our strengths. Commercially, we will build on group specialisms, for example, later life, buy-to-let and land and new homes. We will increase product penetration and further develop cross-sell across the group, for example, in conveyancing and home surveys. We will drive efficiency by leveraging group scale and capability and driving productivity through data and digital tools.

This is about turning platform strength into growth, productivity and higher returns. It's been a good start to the year. In commercial activity, we've already acquired and completed on 4 lettings books, 2 branch openings, 1 bolt-on acquisition and the financial services broker platform rollout is gathering pace. Trading currently supports our market expectations for the year. We do remain mindful of macro uncertainty, and we track metrics daily. We expect further profit growth this year with a strong cash conversion. We are focused on converting our scale and capability into sustained growth and returns. I repeat my conviction in the opportunity for LSL has only increased. Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for joining LSL Interim Results Presentation. I'm Adam Castleton, LFL's Group CEO, and I'm here with David Wolffe, Interim Group CFO.

I'll first cover highlights, market context and progress we've made in our divisions. David will then take you through a financial review. I'll then talk about outlook and some key takeaways, and we'll take questions at the end.

We're recording this event and a replay will be available on the LSL IR website. These are my maiden set of results as Group CEO. I'm really pleased to report the results are in line with expectations, and we continue to make good operational progress. Revenue and profit are up with operating margin maintained at a 15-year high. Return on capital employed of 31% for the last 12 months is much higher than historical levels. These reflect the improvements we've achieved following the transformation of the group in recent years, and this was achieved while continuing to invest for growth. This performance underlines that our capital-light resilient model is delivering consistently while we are reinvesting for the future and the full year outlook remains unchanged.

Moving to key financial highlights. Group revenue increased by 5% to GBP 89.7 million, and we maintained our strong market share. Group underlying operating profit was up 3% to GBP 14.8 million, while we continue to invest strategically in our business and absorb the national insurance increase. We are a highly cash-generative business. Our cash conversion for the last 12 months was 95%. This is at the upper end of our target range of 75% to 100%.

We performed well in a recovering market. Total mortgage lending in the market increased by 5%, with a very different picture in new lending, which was up 22%, whilst product transfers rebalanced back 10% year-on-year. We gained market share with our new mortgage lending up 23%. U.K. residential sales were up 17% with a pull forward of demand given the stamp duty changes. We maintained our market share of this market. Mortgage approvals increased 10%, with the change in our lender mix slightly reducing our estimated share in surveying and valuations with revenue up 9%.

We operate 3 divisions with leading market positions, each benefit from strong long-standing client relationships with scale and strength in their markets as well as expertise and deep domain knowledge. Each delivered operational progress during the period. In Surveying & Valuation, productivity per surveyor increased by 8%. B2C revenue increased by 43%, and we renewed a top 5 lender contract and started working with another new lender.

In Financial Services, new mortgage lending was up 23%. Revenue per adviser increased by 8% and the implementation of the new CRM is progressing well.

In our Estate Agency Franchising division, we increased the size of our lettings portfolio, making 3 acquisitions during the period with a strong pipeline, and we added 3 new branches to our franchise network.

In summary, each division continues to execute well while maintaining discipline on margins and returns.

I'll now hand over to David to take you through the financial review in more detail.

Thank you, Adam. Good morning. I'm David Wolffe, Interim CFO at LSL, previously CFO at a number of high-growth, tech-driven and listed businesses.

Let's look at the group's financial performance in more detail. In the half year, revenue grew 5% to GBP 89.7 million, driven by 9% growth in our largest division, Surveying & Valuation. Underlying operating profit increased to GBP 14.8 million, up 3% year-on-year, and I'll come back to that increase in just a moment.

Operating margin remained strong at 17% at the upper end of our historical range. Cash from operations at GBP 7.4 million reflects shareholder distributions, planned investment and some working capital timing. Again, more on that shortly.

Return on capital employed for the last 12 months increased to 31%, very strong compared to historical levels. So the first half has delivered continuing growth while maintaining a high return on capital profile. Coming back to that operating profit increase, there are 2 main points to highlight.

First, we have made positive operating performance progress with an underlying increase of GBP 3 million before strategic and investment decisions. This progress is driven by our volume growth across the business, improved pricing and the first positive contribution from the Pivotal joint venture.

Second, we made strategic decisions in 2 areas, which reduced profit in the period. We stepped away from some protection-only business as we rebalanced our adviser firms towards mortgage and protection or composite firms, and we made investment across Financial Services and Surveying to drive future growth. So the headline growth of 3% is a combination of that underlying progress and the growth investment.

Turning now to cash flow and capital allocation. In the half, we delivered positive operating cash flow of GBP 7.4 million after working capital movements around the 2024 year-end. I'll come back to this in just a moment.

We deployed capital in 2 key areas in the period. First, in shareholder returns, we distributed GBP 9 million in dividends and share buybacks. The interim dividend is maintained at 4.0p, and the buyback program continues with GBP 3 million deployed to date.

Second, in strategic investment, GBP 3.6 million of cash was spent across CRM development, data and lettings books acquisitions to drive future growth.

Our balance sheet remains robust with June cash at GBP 22 million and a GBP 60 million unutilized facility, we have strong liquidity and our capital-light model ensures ongoing flexibility.

Looking at the positive operating cash flow and working capital in a bit more detail now. The line at the bottom of this slide shows our adjusted cash from operations performance over the last few half periods. The GBP 7.4 million we reported in H1 presents as a lower number than last year, but we had a timing effect of GBP 4 million excess working capital inflow just before the 2024 year-end that then unwound into an outflow into 2025. You can see this in the lines above.

In operating profit, we have stable progression. Depreciation is flat and low, reflecting our capital-light operating model. Cash on lease liabilities continues to moderate after the transformation of the Estate Agency business. But on working capital, H2 2024 inflow of GBP 5.9 million you'll see in the box was an outlier, which illustrates these timing effects around the year-end. The unwind in H1 of 2025 makes our cash conversion look suppressed in the half, even though on a rolling 12 months basis, we made really good progress. We expect that the second half and full year 2025 cash conversion should be normalizing towards our target of 75% to 100%.

Taking each division in turn, let's run through the story of the half. In Surveying & Valuation, revenue grew 9% to GBP 53.2 million, within which B2C was up 43%. Underlying operating profit was GBP 11.9 million with margins at 22%. This is down on the elevated levels of H1 last year with Surveyor commissions now normalized, and this effect is in line with what we have flagged before. But in sequential performance compared to the second half of 2024, we have made good margin progress, up 200 basis points.

Volumes grew with jobs up 7%. Fee per job was up 2% with better terms and more B2C activity, and we improved Surveyor productivity in jobs per surveyor, which was up 8%.

In Financial Services, revenue was flat overall, but this illustrates the combination of mortgage-related revenue up 21% and protection revenue down 12%, following our strategic repositioning away from protection-only brokers. As a result, adviser numbers were down to 2,637, but adviser productivity increased 8% in completions per adviser, and we grew fee per completion by 3%. But overall, at a divisional level, despite the broker repositioning and some P&L investment in CRM, operating profit grew 23% to GBP 4.8 million, with Pivotal making that positive contribution.

In Estate Agency franchising, revenue overall grew 1%, but while residential sales revenue was up 24% and lettings revenue up 4%, our land and new homes business was pushed back by a contract change. As a result, underlying operating profit margin remained flat at 24%, but we are expecting improvement in the second half with cost savings feeding through. Branches grew by 1% after 3 more openings in the half, with overall sales income per branch up 22%.

The lettings portfolio now stands at over 37,400 properties after 7 lettings books acquisitions since mid-2024, with overall income per property now up 1%. So with progress in each of the divisions, the group delivered on expectations in the first half, whilst at the same time, positioning itself for stronger growth in the second half of the year.

And with that, I'll hand you back to Adam to take you through the outlook.

Thank you, David. Expectations for the full year remain unchanged. In the second half, we expect a sequential step-up in profit in each division with an increase in refinancing activity, a strong activity in 2-year and 5-year mortgages in 2020 and 2023 mature in large numbers. We've already seen this in July and August, with July the strongest refinancing month for us this year. We also came into the half with residential sales pipelines increased from this time last year. We will continue to invest in our business in the second half, for example, in lettings books and the FS CRM system.

Indeed, in September, we've already completed a further 3 lettings books. When I presented our preliminary results back in April, just before I started out as Group CEO, I set out my early thoughts and priorities. These remain unchanged, and I'm pleased with early progress. Our senior leadership teams are responding well and are raising their sights and ambitions even higher for the future. We continue our investments in technology and data, notably the new CRM in FS and data in Surveying & Valuations, whilst we are also trialing new AI-enabled solutions to improve productivity.

I'm already working closely with our divisional business leaders on the opportunity to leverage group strengths, and I'm encouraged by the early signs that I'm seeing. I'm working very hard and even more transparent and clear communication, both internally and to the market. For example, we've just rolled out the first wave of updates to our IR website, adding some fresh new elements to allow greater accessibility and transparency. This is all steady, deliberate progress, and I look forward to sharing news of our ongoing progress.

We are a diversified, resilient cash-generative group, strategically positioned for growth. We're delivering, performing in line with expectations, and we're investing carefully while maintaining shareholder distributions. We're building consistently. The LSL of today is stronger and leaner, delivering higher quality earnings. It is early days in my tenure as CEO, and I'm excited about the growth opportunities open to us as a group.

With 2025 on track, we're looking ahead with renewed ambition and with confidence about our future. With that, operator, can we please move to Q&A.

This is Phil from Investor Relations. I'm going to be asking the questions to the management team. You've just watched the presentation that was given to the analysts and now we're moving to live Q&A. [Operator Instructions]. I'm going to ask the questions one at a time, and we'll go through as we have time.

The first question is around group operating margins. They've been held at 17%, which is considered resilient in a softer housing market. What are some of the specific operational efficiencies or strategic actions that have helped maintain the margin?

Thank you, Phil. Yes, very pleased with the 17% margin following our restructure of the group with the franchising Estate Agency, the sale of noncore assets and the move of some of our broker businesses to our joint venture. We're much more resilient, greater quality of earnings flowing through, that's demonstrated with the margins up at 17%, which we've maintained off the back of our restructured group divisions. And so we expect to do better than 17% when we move on beyond 20%. The most important thing is that the quality of the earnings is much greater.

Thank you, Adam. The next question is around AI. Could you talk about how you're embracing the AI opportunity?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Phil. So we've always embraced technology at LSL going back all through the years, we've embraced it. We've leveraged it all the way back to when we started our surveying business, we call the e.surv. We call the e.surv because we were the first to send the physical reports by e-mail.

A number of years later, we're one of the first businesses to actually put the Estate Agency network on one platform. And more recently, within the surveying business, we have 70 machine learning tools. None of those are strictly AI because there's sort of procedures that you put in with written by humans.

But in terms of AI, the one use case that we have is the launch of the AVM model, which we've built over the last 15 months. We've had tested with lenders, is working very, very successfully, and that uses patent recognition and machine learning. And there are other AI tools that we're trialing in the business, including distributing across the whole of the business, the corporate version of ChatGPT.

Great. I've got a series of questions around cash and working capital. Again, I'll ask them one at a time. Your net cash position moved from around GBP 32.5 million at year-end to GBP 22 million at half year. How much of this was due to timing effects, for example, dividend acquisition investments? And what is the outlook for the second half of the year...

Thank you. So we highlighted in the presentation that we had significant shareholder distributions in the half across share buyback and dividends. We distributed GBP 9 million, and that indicates a stable continuing dividend policy. We also invested significant cash in developing the business and in CapEx.

We highlighted that there were GBP 3.6 million investment across lettings books acquisitions, driving the Estate Agency franchise business and further GBP 2.5 million of CapEx that was driven by investment in the Surveying division, where we have been building automated valuation model capabilities that will drive the next generation of revenues.

And within that cash profile in the first half of the year, we also delivered adjusted operating cash from operations of GBP 7.4 million. Now that number, as we talked about, was influenced by working capital flows, and I'll just explain the pointed issue there. In the back end of 2024, we had an unusual inflow of working capital from a number of delayed payments of around GBP 4 million, GBP 4.5 million.

That inflow, which was just around timing of payments just before year-end, then resulted in an outflow in early 2025, that depressed our cash flow from operations. And I can illustrate that in the cash conversion numbers across the periods. So we target 75% to 100% of cash conversion. And actually, in the second half of last year, that cash conversion number was 145% influenced by that GBP 4 million of working capital inflow.

As a result of that reversal and the unwinding of that in the first half of the year, cash conversion in the first half of this year actually dropped to 50%. And what we signaled is that we're now expecting our cash conversion to return to what we call our target range of 75% to 100%. And that's the expectation when you look at the position by the time we get to the end of the full year.

Thanks, David. There's a question here on a similar topic around liquidity or your cash position. How sensitive is that to lender or client payment term changes?

Yes. So I think we have limited sensitivity to payment terms across the business. And the reason I say that, I think, is there are 3 factors in play. The first is that in 2 of our 3 divisions, we are effectively managing all of the cash flows of the business on -- whether it's a mortgage transaction or a housing transaction, we are managing the cash before it gets remitted out. So we are in control of those flows and insulated from timing effects.

The second is that in terms of the payables for the business across the group, our single biggest cost is people and payment terms on staff costs are obviously pretty fixed. And the last point, I think, to highlight is in the one business, which is surveying where we have any meaningful working capital around when our big customers who are the major lenders pay us, they are big institutions with whom we've been trading for many, many years, and those payment terms are very, very stable. So I think overall, we have very limited sensitivity in terms of our liquidity to payment terms.

Great. I've got a broader question here. The question is acknowledging or recognizing that the new LSL is a much lower capital-intensive business, and that raises the question of would you consider taking on some debt onto the balance sheet given you're a lower capital-intensive business?

Thank you. Theoretically, of course, yes, we're less volatile with lower capital employed, in which case, in theory, we have the ability to take on debt with some comfort. At the moment, I think we're a little way away from that. We've got a very strong balance sheet, which we're happy with. It gives us optionality for investments. But if we have opportunities to make investments that take us into debt, we'll be comfortable with that given the fact that, as you say, we've got low capital employed, but also most importantly, we've got a high headroom with our revolving credit facility. And also we have a business which is much less cyclical. But as ever with LSL, we've been over the years, very cautious, very cautious of debt. We'd always be careful in that case.

Great. Thanks, Adam. A question here around how does the business manage cybersecurity and data privacy risks?

We've invested quite heavily in recent years on governance and compliance. As you would expect, in this day and age, it's certainly something that keeps us very focused as there are from time to time some corporate issues. We have got a committee that looks at all cyber. We've got committees through all of the businesses. It's something we keep under review very, very regularly. And we're pleased with the governance that we have, but we're always very, very watchful, certainly not complacent in this day and age.

Great. I'll now turn to a number of divisional questions. The first one is just on the Surveying & Valuation business. The question is how sustainable are the current margins in surveying given last year's figures benefited from the lower incentive payments?

Sure. So yes, we called this out in the presentation, the fact that the margins in the first half of this year at 22% for the division, represent what we see as a normalized level of margin and that the comparative period last year was influenced upwards by a temporary delay in incentives that affected that period.

So we would see the half that we've just reported as a normalized level. And our expectations for the full year are at a similar level. And therefore, we are comfortable that that's a good indication of the base that we're working with.

Great. And sticking with Surveying & Valuation for first half of 2025, picking up on what you just said, David, profits fell slightly due to the normalization of incentive payments as well as investment made in your automated valuation model project or initiative. When should investors start to expect these investments to generate decent returns for the business?

Yes. So the AVM space is a place in the market we've not historically been playing at all. So about 15 months ago, we started the project of building an AVM model using a team of data scientists. We've been testing that in recent months with a major lender, and that testing has been very successful.

We are in the latter part of conversations with one lender and others who are interested in starting off with an initial contract to deliver AVM services to one lender. So we expect by the end of this year to have the first initial contract, and then we expect to roll that out over the next year or 2 to get to our natural market share of 38%. So it will roll out over time, starting off with the first contract signature that we expect in the latter part of this year.

Great. Thanks, Adam. A couple of questions now on the Estate Agency business. Could you just talk about the pace of branch expansions within the Estate Agency business?

Certainly. Very pleased with the first half performance with 3 new branches opening, 2 of which were cold starts. They weren't opening of branches from existing franchisees, and that demonstrates the strength of the brand, attracting people to us to start up their franchisee business under the Your Move and Reeds Rains brands.

We would expect going forward 2 or 3, a small handful every half. That was about the pace that we would like. So steady incremental growth, which demonstrates the opportunity for growth within Estate Agency as we have with the other divisions.

Great. And then just following up within Estate Agency still. You're obviously running 100% franchise business there. How much support -- financial support do you provide to the Estate Agency franchisee?

Thank you for the question. Relatively limited. When we launched the franchising, which is something that I don't think have been done before, and we did it in difficult markets with some new franchisees who never run businesses before, we offered some working capital support, which actually was not taken up too much. There was GBP 2 million or GBP 3 million that was taken in the early days of the franchising.

We now have less outstanding, probably about GBP 1 million, GBP 1.5 million, which are general working capital, which are well within our comfort levels. What we find is that the franchisees are very successful and the ones that are new to franchising and new to Estate Agency and owning their own business, very pleased as well. So very limited and modest working capital support even in times of difficult markets.

Thanks, Adam. And just another question here we've got on Estate Agency. This one relates to the investment in the letting books. Could you just clarify for the audience how much financing you're providing to the Estate Agencies and whether or not you own these or the franchisee owns the lettings books?

So we've got a long-running expertise in the identification and acquisition of lettings books. We're particularly particularly active in 2015 and '16, less so more recently. Now they've gone the franchising, we see as an opportunity for growth, assisting the purchase of lettings books for our franchisees.

We did about 3 or 4 in the first half, and we think we can carry that cadence going forward. Effectively, we identify the lettings books, 80% of the time. Sometimes the franchisee themselves identify it. We provide the financing for it. The average lettings book may cost about GBP 300,000, GBP 400,000, so we provide the financing for that. They are owned by the franchisee. But in the case that the franchisee moves on and the letting books revert to LSL. Generally speaking, a very, very good use of capital and very high IRR for those projects.

Great. Got a couple of questions now on Pivotal, the joint venture. Again, I'll ask them one at a time. There's a question here about the recent changes of leadership at Pivotal. Does this have any impact or implications for LSL Group?

No, the CEO of Pivotal was previously the founder and CEO and Chairman of LSL, who took on the role of initiating, starting off and building the initial momentum of Pivotal. Now as we move to the next phase, as we've grown towards scale, there's now a change of management as a new CEO has come in, as you've said, and Simon is the Executive Chair. So he's taking a watching brief and helping with all his experience to drive that business onwards. We've seen some really good momentum, and we hope and expect a positive return on capital for our shareholders.

Great. And the second question on the Pivotal joint venture. It's obviously stated policy as a buy and build. How are you continuing to scale the Pivotal joint venture through acquisitions without overpaying for the deals?

Discipline, Phil discipline. The team are very, very disciplined. They have shown no signs -- and we wouldn't allow overpaying. They just basically are disciplined and we've been able to attract brokers to the buy-and-build story, I like to be part of that firm Pivotal and also benefit from some of the synergies that, that group can offer. So really, it's discipline. And across all of LSL, we've always been a disciplined business.

Even in the lettings books, we were aware when we were active some years ago and now too, that there are people always in the market that are, should we say, splashing the cash, paying a little bit more than the average, but we've always been disciplined and we won't chase volume for the sake of it. And that was, in reality, some of the slow start with Pivotal was, there were a few deals that came along that we could have paid more. We could have bought to get some momentum, but we chose to pass and we chose to be disciplined with our approach, which we retain.

Great. Well, next question maybe relates to discipline here, Adam. You've got cash on your balance sheet, you're a cash-generative business. You're doing a buyback. Is there any scope to expand or enhance the share buyback program?

Yes. We -- as you say, Phil, we've got a dividend. We're paying -- we've kept that basically flat since -- in absolute terms since COVID, and we've got the share buyback program, which we're regularly dipping into each week. We're comfortable with our cash balances, which gives us flexibility for organic and on a sort of a specific basis, any inorganic opportunities. We're sort of comfortable with the balance at the moment. It's always kept under review, the dividend policy as the share buyback opportunities, we try to keep flexibility in the market. I think we've got the balance about right at the moment.

Great. Well, we've rather quickly run out of time. We've got time for one final question. But before I ask you that, just as a reminder to everybody, if you do have any further questions, if you send through an e-mail to the LSL team, we'll pick those up. And sorry if we weren't able to cover all the questions.

But the final question, Adam, why did you reduce exposure to protection-only firms within financial service business? And then does that go to 0? And what is the financial impact of moving away from protection-only firms?

We like to focus our attention and our proposition where we feel that we'll get the best return and where we can add most value to our broker firms. We believe that composite firms with deep relationships with our clients and where we have a deep relationship is where we want to focus our attention and our investments and our CRM system really is focused there for composite firms, protection only, which is they're good businesses generally, but they're less our focus because they're generally a little bit more sales driven and they're not broad in the products that they offer their customers and a little bit less of an advised process. So very focused on our composite firms.

Do I think it will go to 0? No. We've reduced a number of the firms. There might be a few more that reduce, but I think we'll always have that balance between mortgage and protection within composite firms and some protection only firms depending on the balance of the business that's being written.

Great. Well, Adam, I'm going to hand back to you for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Listen, thank you for your time. I look forward to meeting any of you out there. It was slightly unnerving to look into a blank screen. So hopefully, if you've got interest in the business, which is really exciting, it'd be great to meet with you and explain a little bit further and in more depth about the opportunities this business offers a really great company that in recent years has transformed, got higher margins, lower capital that we have to spend each year and a higher return on capital employed. So we look forward to meeting as many of you as I can in person in the flesh. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Adam and David, for joining us today. That does conclude the LSL Property Services investor presentation.

Please, can you take a moment to complete a short survey following this event. The recording of this presentation will be made available on Engage investor. We hope you've enjoyed today's webinar.

Good morning. Thank you for joining LSL's Interim Results Presentation. I'm Adam Castleton, LSL's Group CEO, and I'm here with David Wolffe, Interim Group CFO.

I'll first cover highlights, market context and progress we've made in our divisions. David will then take you through a financial review. I'll then talk about outlook and some key takeaways, and we'll take questions at the end.

We're recording this event and a replay will be available on the LSL IR website. These are my maiden set of results as Group CEO. I'm really pleased to report the results are in line with expectations, and we continue to make good operational progress. Revenue and profit are up with operating margin maintained at a 15-year high. Return on capital employed of 31% for the last 12 months is much higher than historical levels. These reflect the improvements we've achieved following the transformation of the group in recent years, and this was achieved while continuing to invest for growth. This performance underlines that our capital-light resilient model is delivering consistently while we are reinvesting for the future and the full year outlook remains unchanged.

Moving to key financial highlights. Group revenue increased by 5% to GBP 89.7 million, and we maintained our strong market share. Group underlying operating profit was up 3% to GBP 14.8 million, while we continue to invest strategically in our business and absorb the national insurance increase. We are a highly cash-generative business. Our cash conversion for the last 12 months was 95%. This is at the upper end of our target range of 75% to 100%.

We performed well in a recovering market. Total mortgage lending in the market increased by 5% with a very different picture in new lending, which was up 22%, whilst product transfers rebalanced back 10% year-on-year. We gained market share with our new mortgage lending up 23%. U.K. residential sales were up 17% with a pull forward of demand given the stamp duty changes. We maintained our market share of this market. Mortgage approvals increased 10%, with the change in our lender mix slightly reducing our estimated share in surveying and valuations with revenue up 9%.

We operate 3 divisions with leading market positions, each benefit from strong long-standing client relationships with scale and strength in their markets as well as expertise and deep domain knowledge. Each delivered operational progress during the period. In Surveying & Valuation, productivity per surveyor increased by 8%. B2C revenue increased by 43%, and we renewed a top 5 lender contract and started working with another new lender.

In Financial Services, new mortgage lending was up 23%. Revenue per adviser increased by 8% and the implementation of the new CRM is progressing well. In our Estate Agency Franchising division, we increased the size of our lettings portfolio, making 3 acquisitions during the period with a strong pipeline, and we added 3 new branches to our franchise network.

In summary, each division continues to execute well while maintaining discipline on margins and returns. I'll now hand over to David to take you through the financial review in more detail.

Thank you, Adam. Good morning. I'm David Wolffe, Interim CFO at LSL, previously CFO at a number of high-growth, tech-driven and listed businesses. Let's look at the group's financial performance in more detail.

In the half year, revenue grew 5% to GBP 89.7 million, driven by 9% growth in our largest division, Surveying & Valuation. Underlying operating profit increased to GBP 14.8 million, up 3% year-on-year, and I'll come back to that increase in just a moment. Operating margin remained strong at 17% at the upper end of our historical range. Cash from operations at GBP 7.4 million reflects shareholder distributions, planned investment and some working capital timing. Again, more on that shortly.

Return on capital employed for the last 12 months increased to 31%, very strong compared to historical levels. So the first half has delivered continuing growth while maintaining a high return on capital profile. Coming back to that operating profit increase, there are 2 main points to highlight. First, we have made positive operating performance progress with an underlying increase of GBP 3 million before strategic and investment decisions. This progress is driven by our volume growth across the business, improved pricing and the first positive contribution from the Pivotal Joint Venture.

Second, we made strategic decisions in 2 areas, which reduced profit in the period. We stepped away from some protection-only business as we rebalanced our adviser firms towards mortgage and protection or composite firms, and we made investment across Financial Services and Surveying to drive future growth. So the headline growth of 3% is a combination of that underlying progress and the growth investment.

Turning now to cash flow and capital allocation. In the half, we delivered positive operating cash flow of GBP 7.4 million after working capital movements around the 2024 year-end. I'll come back to this in just a moment. We deployed capital in 2 key areas in the period. First, in shareholder returns, we distributed GBP 9 million in dividends and share buybacks. The interim dividend is maintained at 4.0p, and the buyback program continues with GBP 3 million deployed to date. Second, in strategic investment, GBP 3.6 million of cash was spent across CRM development, data and lettings books acquisitions to drive future growth.

Our balance sheet remains robust. With June cash at GBP 22 million and a GBP 60 million unutilized facility, we have strong liquidity and our capital-light model ensures ongoing flexibility.

Looking at the positive operating cash flow and working capital in a bit more detail now. The line at the bottom of this slide shows our adjusted cash from operations performance over the last few half periods. The GBP 7.4 million we reported in H1 presents as a lower number than last year, but we had a timing effect of GBP 4 million excess working capital inflow just before the 2024 year-end that then unwound into an outflow into 2025. You can see this in the lines above.

In operating profit, we have stable progression. Depreciation is flat and low, reflecting our capital-light operating model. Cash on lease liabilities continues to moderate after the transformation of the Estate Agency business. But on working capital, H2 2024 inflow of GBP 5.9 million you'll see in the box was an outlier, which illustrates these timing effects around the year-end. The unwind in H1 of 2025 makes our cash conversion look suppressed in the half, even though on a rolling 12 months basis, we made really good progress. We expect that the second half and full year 2025 cash conversion should be normalizing towards our target of 75% to 100%.

Taking each division in turn, let's run through the story of the half. In Surveying & Valuation, revenue grew 9% to GBP 53.2 million, within which B2C was up 43%. Underlying operating profit was GBP 11.9 million, with margins at 22%. This is down on the elevated levels of H1 last year with Surveyor commissions now normalized, and this effect is in line with what we have flagged before. But in sequential performance compared to the second half of 2024, we have made good margin progress, up 200 basis points.

Volumes grew with jobs up 7%. Fee per job was up 2% with better terms and more B2C activity, and we improved Surveyor productivity in jobs per surveyor, which was up 8%. In Financial Services, revenue was flat overall, but this illustrates the combination of mortgage-related revenue up 21% and protection revenue down 12%, following our strategic repositioning away from protection-only brokers. As a result, adviser numbers were down to 2,637, but adviser productivity increased 8% in completions per adviser, and we grew fee per completion by 3%. But overall, at a divisional level, despite the broker repositioning and some P&L investment in CRM, operating profit grew 23% to GBP 4.8 million, with Pivotal making that positive contribution.

In Estate Agency Franchising, revenue overall grew 1%, but while residential sales revenue was up 24% and lettings revenue up 4%, our land and new homes business was pushed back by a contract change. As a result, underlying operating profit margin remained flat at 24%. We are expecting improvement in the second half with cost savings feeding through. Branches grew by 1% after 3 more openings in the half, with overall sales income per branch up 22%. The lettings portfolio now stands at over 37,400 properties after 7 lettings books acquisitions since mid-2024, with overall income per property now up 1%.

So with progress in each of the divisions, the group delivered on expectations in the first half, whilst at the same time, positioning itself for stronger growth in the second half of the year. And with that, I'll hand you back to Adam to take you through the outlook.

Thank you, David. Expectations for the full year remain unchanged. In the second half, we expect a sequential step-up in profit in each division with an increase in refinancing activity, a strong activity in 2-year and 5-year mortgages in 2020 and 2023 mature in large numbers. We've already seen this in July and August, with July the strongest refinancing month for us this year. We also came into the half with residential sales pipelines increased from this time last year. We will continue to invest in our business in the second half, for example, in lettings books and the FS CRM system.

Indeed, in September, we've already completed a further 3 lettings books. When I presented our preliminary results back in April, just before I started out as Group CEO, I set out my early thoughts and priorities. These remain unchanged, and I'm pleased with early progress. Our senior leadership teams are responding well and are raising their sights and ambitions even higher for the future. We continue our investments in technology and data, notably the new CRM in FS and data in Surveying & Valuations, whilst we are also trialing new AI-enabled solutions to improve productivity.

I'm already working closely with our divisional business leaders on the opportunity to leverage group strengths, and I'm encouraged by the early signs that I'm seeing. I'm working very hard and even more transparent and clear communication, both internally and to the market. For example, we've just rolled out the first wave of updates to our IR website, adding some fresh new elements to allow greater accessibility and transparency. This is all steady, deliberate progress, and I look forward to sharing news of our ongoing progress.

We are a diversified, resilient cash-generative group, strategically positioned for growth. We're delivering, performing in line with expectations, and we're investing carefully while maintaining shareholder distributions. We're building consistently. The LSL of today is stronger and leaner, delivering higher-quality earnings. It is early days in my tenure as CEO, and I'm excited about the growth opportunities open to us as a group. With 2025 on track, we're looking ahead with renewed ambition and with confidence about our future. With that, operator, can we please move to Q&A.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] There appears to be no questions at this time. So I'd like to hand the call back over for questions via the webcast.

Okay. Thank you. We've got a number of questions on the webcast. I'll ask them one at a time. The first question is from Glynis at Jefferies. Glynis asks about the Surveying division and the year-on-year movement in the operating margin. You talked about this as -- in the second half of 2024, you're talking about it again today. How should people think about the first half 2025 margin? And what sort of level is considered normal?

Yes. Thank you, Glynis. Thank you for your question. So last year, as we flagged at the interims and the prelims, we had enhanced margins in the first half of last year as we came into the year in 2024. We had a burst of activity, and we didn't bring back the surveyor incentives immediately. And secondly, there were some administrative heads that we didn't bring back immediately as well. Therefore, there was quite an enhanced margin for the first half of, I think it was 25%, sequentially then that fell in H2 and has now recovered to about 21%, 22%. We expect that really to be the norm. So at the moment, 21%, 22% is really the norm for our margin going forward, the 25% was elevated in the very top end of what we might normally expect to see.

Great. Thank you, Adam. The second question comes from Jonathan, who's at Edison. Jonathan asks about the impact of changes in stamp duty. Have you seen any material changes in demand in the month since the stamp duty changes came into effect?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for your question. Yes, there was a spike, particularly in March with the stamp duty changes. So we saw for the whole half, 17% up for the overall market, which we tracked. March was particularly strong. It was actually 170,000 transactions in the market for that month. What we've seen since then is a good market as we expected. In fact, because H1 2024 was a bit softer, the 17% looks very high. But in fact, the second half of this year will be a little bit more in transactions than it was in the first half. So we see sequential rises, notwithstanding the spike. So certainly, if the question is which -- from time to time, people have asked whether somehow there was a spike and then it sort of hollowed everything out, it certainly didn't. We entered this half year with increased pipelines, which is great. As I said, we expect residential sales to be a little bit more in the second half than it was in the first half, notwithstanding the spike duty spike.

Great. Thanks, Adam. We have a follow-up question or a second question rather, sorry, from Glynis at Jefferies. There's been a lot of talk in recent weeks about potential government policy changes. How has this impacted your business in recent weeks? And if some of the changes that are being speculated in the press were put into place, what are the implications for the group?

Thank you again, Glynis, for the question. Obviously, something that we're all reading in the newspapers. The autumn budget is obviously a couple of months away in November, and we read, as you do, Glynis, all the various either ideas or kites that are being flown, it's hard to tell which they are. I don't think I'll comment on speculating what may not come through and what that might mean. Obviously, as a business, we stay very close to what will happen, what we focus on are the facts that we have at hand and as a business that covers the whole range of services in the property and lending markets, we've got really deep knowledge and deep data.

So if we look at all the information that we have across Surveying Financial Services and Estate Agency covering mortgage applications, completions, fall-throughs, which are when agreed sales fall through sometimes because the chain has fallen through because people pull out. We're seeing nothing of any of our metrics and -- because I expected some of these questions rather than checking these numbers once a day, I'm checking them twice a day with people and ringing people up. We're not seeing anything at the moment. Whether there's a question of sentiment, I can't say, but certainly, all of our metrics are showing no change of customer behavior.

And I think depending on what does or doesn't transpire in the budget, as we've demonstrated over many, many years, we're a dynamic business. We're very quick to react and to change the market. We're well positioned for that. And for any negative shocks that comes to the market in the future, of course, following our franchising restructure, we're a lot more even in our earnings, less volatile. And so we're certainly less spiky. And we're very, very quick to react.

And as I said, the data that we have is very, very specific. Just as a little example, when our friends across the water introduced the tariffs, I made a call and said, could they pull out fall-through data from Solihull, which is where the Land Rover factory is and in the Northeast where the Toyota factory is just in case people felt nervous because of the tariffs. So we really stay on top of data closely. And whilst I can't tell what may happen tomorrow or the day after in the budget, certainly, everything we've seen demonstrating that the customer behavior is unchanged and in line with what our expectations are.

Great. We're actually going to move back to the conference call. We've had a question on the conference call, and then I've got another 2 questions on the web platform.

And we take a question from Robert Sanders from Shore Capital.

Just I suppose following on from that question about the government and sort of the other aspect of the market that's been a bit open to surveys has been the lettings market and [indiscernible] whatever saying that there's a downturn. Is that something that you're experiencing? And what do you think the outlook is going to be for the lettings market given renters rights [indiscernible] as we move into the next year? And then as a follow-on question, can I also ask you about what your -- you talked about the technology and data innovation and what you're seeing as the opportunities, particularly in the Surveying & Valuation division for the use of AI?

Certainly, yes. Thank you. Thanks very much. Good question about the lettings market. The first thing I'll say is the lettings market is extremely resilient. If you actually look at the number of privately rented dwellings in the country, it's been very stable at GBP 5.4 million, GBP 5.5 million for the last few years, so we've seen no change of that. From our perspective, we have slightly increased our lettings portfolio, as David said, to over 37,000. And actually, as legislation, you mentioned the renters rights becomes a bit tighter. What we're seeing is that there's more interest from landlords who are self-managing to move towards a managed service. And we're starting to see that movement and that interest and we're certainly marketing to those landlords.

It's interesting, you mentioned some of the metrics and the headlines that we see that forecast problems for the lettings market. I would just say that if you note some of those metrics, they don't necessarily show what they may appear to on the face of it. The first thing is there's been some publicity about lettings instructions being down, which is actually something we've seen over a number of years. One of the main reasons for that is that people are staying in their properties for longer, and therefore, there are less instructions than historically they were. Landlords will keep a good paying regular tenant and tenants will -- with everything going on in the market, will prefer to stay where they are. So that's certainly the reason -- one of the main reasons that instructions are down. It's not demonstrating that things are leaving the market.

And also, we hear metrics quoted around there being more properties for sale that were previously rented. And whilst that might be the case, of course, those rental properties are often bought by other buy-to-let landlords. So certainly, we don't see a big change in the numbers of properties rented. We see opportunities for further growth. As David said, since the middle of '24, we've done to the end of the period 7. And actually, we did 3 lettings books during the half. And since the end of the half, actually in September, we've done 3 and just about to close to 4. So we see some good opportunities there. It's certainly not buoyant as it was when originally buy-to-let really grew quite strongly, but we're seeing no material change in the numbers of properties, dwellings that are privately let.

In terms of the renters rights, as you mentioned, and as I say, just to reiterate, a, we don't see that changing materially the structure of the market. As I said, it may certainly lead to an opportunity for us to bring landlords who are currently self-managing over to a managed service. And that's probably a general point to make around regulation and regulatory changes. As a larger player, we're well placed to make the investments required to cover any changes necessary. And obviously, our deep relationships with whether it be our franchisees or our financial services, we're able to give our sort of trusted advices we have for many, many years.

I've got 2 questions here from Robin from Zeus. Again, I'll ask them one at a time. In terms of the first question, could you please provide some more detail on Pivotal Growth in terms of current run rate of advisers, revenue, trading performance?

Yes, Pivotals -- the Pivotal investments is scaling very well in terms of EBITDA, which is the actual entity results in the first half, that was -- again, these are within the interims, these are about GBP 3 million, GBP 4 million of EBITDA. So on a decent run rate for the year. So it's scaling up well. There were 2 small acquisitions during the half that we announced in the interims. And actually, in the post balance sheet note, you'll see that there was one further acquisition that completed after the end of the period. So scaling up nicely with over 500 advisers, the EBITDA run rate is going well. We're looking forward to continued growth and eventual realization of our investments. Certainly, we expect that to be well over our return on our weighted average cost of capital.

Great. Thanks, Adam. And then there's a second question from Robin also about Pivotal growth. So Robin's question is, can you please expand on your reference about LSL being founded 21 years ago and it's being built on -- success being built on operational resilience, opportunistic dealmaking and entrepreneurial culture. What are LSL's strengths? And how does Pivotal fit into these strengths?

Okay. That's okay, interesting. So yes, I mean, I won't repeat the words, but the business has -- it's quite entrepreneurial. It's very agile and it's very dynamic. We're very quick to move and to take opportunities. One of the examples actually I often use is when the pandemic hit at the same time that we were planning for the worst case for a year where we would have no business, we were also planning for the state agency to open immediately, and we're planning for both. And in the end, we really, really farmed the market well as it recovers. So very, very quick, and we're always agile.

The opportunity -- the opportunistic element of Pivotal when it was founded was for a buy and build within the broking business, which exists in many other industries as we know, and there's an opportunity for us in the broking business, which we have launched. So really, it is an opportunistic approach to buy and build within a sector that had not seen it before. And so far, we're pleased with the scaling. And as I said, we expect a realization of our investments in due course.

Great. That's all the questions covered on the web platform. No further questions. That's it. Back to you, Adam, for closing remarks.

Listen, thank you for all the questions. I apologize for my colleague, David. They've all been pointed at me and I've answered them all. So I'm sorry that your -- all your numbers are not...

[indiscernible]

Thank you very much. So listen, thank you for the questions. We're really excited about the opportunities ahead for the group. We're available for any follow-up that you may need. And I thank you all for your questions, your interest, and I look forward to carrying on the dialogue with you. Thank you.