Saga Aktie

Good morning, and welcome to the Saga plc preliminary results for the year ended 31st of January 2026 presentation. [Operator Instructions]

The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself, however, the company can review questions submitted today, and publish responses where appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand over to Mike Hazell, CEO. Good morning, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Saga's results for the year ended 31st of January 2026. My name is Mike Hazell. I'm the Group CEO, and I'm joined today by our Group CFO, Mark Watkins. I'll start with a quick overview of the year, highlighting the huge progress that we've made. Mark will then talk you through our financial results, and I'll then provide an update on our strategy and the significant progress we are making before turning to questions. As a reminder, for those of you that haven't seen our more detailed [ city ] presentation, that is available on our website together with our full set of results.

This has been a transformational year for Saga, underpinned by strong full year results and a performance that was ahead of expectations. We completed our refinancing in February last year, putting in place a new 2031 corporate debt facility. This has materially enhanced the group's liquidity position, significantly increased covenant headroom and provided funding certainty as we execute our growth plans. We restructured our insurance business through the sale of AICL, our in-house underwriter and the launch of our Ageas partnership. We now have a less complex insurance business where we no longer take any underwriting risk and benefit from a more predictable income stream.

Travel has now become our largest and fastest-growing driver of profits. To better support this growth, we consolidated our previously separate Travel leadership teams into one customer-centric operation. As we simplify our approach to business, we are better able to place our full attention and focus on customer with brand at the heart of our decision-making. Importantly, we've not allowed these changes to get in the way of our continued focus on trading and performance.

We've grown each of our core businesses with revenues and profits up across the group and net debt reducing significantly. The progress we've made this year is clear evidence that our plans are working. As we continue to deliver on those plans, we now have even greater confidence with regard to the GBP 100 million profit target that we laid out in April last year.

This slide shows more detail on the strong performance that we've delivered right across the group. As you can see, each of our core businesses have had a very successful year, delivering significant growth in revenue and profit. At the same time, we've been working to support future growth and further strengthening our brand with the launch of new innovative products such as our new savings partnership with NatWest and our brilliant new podcast, Experience is Everything. This is very much, therefore, a group-wide, indeed brand-wide turnaround.

Now I'll hand you to Mark to go through our financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today to present such a strong set of numbers. I'll spend the next few minutes covering the details of the financial results before covering the outlook for the year 2026-'27.

Saga has exceeded our guidance, delivering a strong financial performance, driven by the trading performance of our travel businesses and insurance broking. Underlying revenue, which excludes some accounting adjustments and one-off items, increased 11% on the prior period. Underlying PBT from continuing operations of GBP 44.2 million is ahead of our expectations and 19% ahead of the prior year. This was largely driven by the continued growth in our Travel businesses and an improved performance in Insurance Broking, offset by higher finance costs associated with the successful refinancing at the beginning of last year.

The group continued to be highly cash generative with available operating cash flow of GBP 205.9 million in the period, an 88% increase, supported by stronger cash generation in Ocean Cruise and the GBP 60 million receipt from Ageas, following the launch of the insurance partnership. A strategic priority for the group is to reduce net debt, and this accelerated this year. At the 31st of January, net debt was GBP 499.5 million, GBP 93.3 million lower than last year. The lower net debt and 16% growth in trading EBITDA drove a significant reduction in leverage with our ratio now at 3.7x compared with 4.4x at the same point in the prior year.

I'll now focus on headline underlying profit contributions from each of our business units. Our Travel business continue to generate strong customer demand, delivering GBP 87.2 million of underlying PBT, a 37% increase on the year before. Our Cruise business performed exceptionally well. Underlying PBT of GBP 67.3 million was 38% higher than the prior period, driven by the strong trading performance in load factors and per diems alongside ongoing cost discipline.

In River Cruise, it's a similar story with growing per diems with load factors consistent with the prior year as we introduced Spirit of the Moselle in July 2025. And Holidays also grew with passenger numbers up 11%. Looking ahead into '26, '27, all of our Travel businesses show strong growth in forward bookings, particularly Ocean and River Cruise. Our Insurance Broking business also performed well. Performance was ahead of our expectations with underlying PBT growing to GBP 16.9 million.

The growth in profits was also achieved alongside growth in policy volumes for 3 of our 4 key products, with motor, travel and PMI, all returning to growth after a number of years of decline. Other businesses and central costs marginally increased due to lower investment income as the group is carrying less cash than in the prior year. The result of all of this is that underlying PBT increased to GBP 44.2 million, 19% higher than the prior year and ahead of our guidance.

Insurance underwriting is now classified as discontinued, but the strong performance in the first half supported our ability to pay a GBP 10 million pre-completion dividend and receive an additional GBP 11.4 million of proceeds on completion of the sale in July. Debt reduction is a clear strategic priority for Saga, and I'm pleased with the progress made this year. During the year, net debt reduced by GBP 93.3 million to GBP 499.5 million. This excludes the GBP 60 million upfront Affinity partnership proceeds with a leverage ratio of 3.7x, also below the year-end level of 4.4x.

Available operating cash flow for the full year was GBP 205.9 million, 88% higher than last year, supported by strong cash generation at Ocean Cruise and the GBP 60 million receipts from Ageas following the launch of the partnership in December. Debt service costs have increased due to the HPS refinancing, which was drawn in February last year, and restructuring costs have increased due to the AICL disposal with associated net cash proceeds of GBP 68.8 million.

I'll now cover the outlook for '26-'27. We've made significant financial progress this year. We exceeded our expectations in profitability, net debt reduced significantly and as a group, deleveraging has accelerated. This is all underpinned by the long-term funding we secured last year. This is due in 2031 and also includes access to an additional GBP 150 million of undrawn and committed facilities.

As I look ahead into '26, '27, our confidence is high. Our customers are resilient, and we already have great forward bookings for '26, '27 in our Travel businesses. Our exposure to the Middle East is minimal as we typically offer very few itineraries to the region and our fuel and foreign exchange rates are hedged well into 2027. And importantly, we have a lower risk insurance model following the Ageas deal. This gives us significant confidence in our '26-'27 outlook. We expect Ocean Cruise to continue its momentum with further underlying PBT growth expected, supported by strong load factors and per diems with no dry docks planned in the year.

River Cruise load factors and per diems are expected to continue to grow alongside increased passengers in Holidays. In Insurance Broking, we expect '26-'27 profitability to be at least in line with '25-'26 and above our previous guidance as we continue to embed the Ageas partnership throughout the year. Finance costs will be marginally lower than '25-'26, reflecting the lower Ocean Cruise debt and lower group finance costs.

The effective blended pro forma rate is expected to be 7.6%. What this all means for the group is that we expect underlying profitability to take a further step forward in '26, '27 and importantly, our net debt and leverage ratio to continue to reduce.

And with that, I'll hand back to Mike for an update on our strategic progress.

Thanks, Mark. So a very strong financial performance and confidence in our outlook that will underpin our future growth.

Let me now talk to you about the strategic progress that we've made and what you can expect going forward. As I have said, this was a transformational year for Saga and serves as the launch pad for long-term sustainable growth. We've simplified our approach to business, brought focus and strategic clarity into our decision-making and reintroduced a performance culture that is driving results. The sale of AICL and the launch of our Home and Motor partnership with Ageas means that we no longer take underwriting risk and have materially reduced the complexity of our insurance operations.

Once fully transitioned next year, the headcount for our remaining insurance operations will have reduced from around 2,000 people to fewer than 400 with the majority of the colleagues affected by the Ageas transaction transferring across to their business. Meanwhile, revenues and profits are growing as we spend more of our time on customer experience and marketing, leveraging our unique experience in these areas. Travel is now the largest driver of profit in the group. And we have consolidated our 3 Travel businesses, Ocean Cruise, River Cruise and Holidays into a single operation, enabling us to create a more efficient, consistent and customer-focused approach across all of our travel products.

With this simplification comes greater strategic clarity, focusing on and leveraging our core strengths. At the heart of everything we do is our customer and our brand. By simplifying our approach and leveraging partner capabilities to deal with operational complexity, we are able to adopt a more focused customer-led mindset. Saga's brand and long-standing customer principles are now the driver of decision-making across the group. And you can see the results in our performance. We have a strong streamlined management team and have combined a passion for our customer with a reset of performance that is driving success across the group.

Nobody understands older people better than us, which isn't surprising because we've been doing this for a long time. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of Saga, and we'll be celebrating the enduring strength of our business and our brand. Over our 75 years of business, we've built up a huge amount of information and experience that we use to ensure we deliver for our customers in ways that others simply can't. Our approach is built on recognizing that our customers have different needs and expectations and constantly working to better understand those needs and meet those expectations.

Through a simple set of principles shown here at the bottom of the page, we seek to protect and leverage the unique competitive advantages that we have and in doing so, deliver products and services for our customers that keep them coming back. So we're in a great position to win in a highly attractive market with an affluent, thriving and growing demographic. In a volatile world, they are a resilient customer group with wealth and income generally well sheltered from changing market conditions.

As you can see from the left-hand side of this chart, people over 50 already make up 38% of the U.K. population. And over the next 30 years, that will increase to almost 50%. It's a customer group that is typically more affluent and with improvements in medicine and health care, they are living longer and increasingly feeling younger and are more active than previous generations. It's no surprise, therefore, that travel is at the top of the list of things they wish to spend their time and money enjoying. 81% tell us that travel is the thing that makes life most fulfilling for them. Not just any travel, though, and you'll see later how we understand and cater for their range of needs through a variety of travel products designed with them in mind.

But they also have needs beyond purely travel. And those needs, much like in travel are typically not well understood or served. Saga has built its business on identifying those needs and meeting them better than anyone else. All of the products that we offer derive from this. And indeed, there are plenty of opportunities to help older people in ways we don't today. At the heart of what we do is trust. Our customers trust that Saga understands them and will meet their needs in ways that others don't. And it's by getting that right that we've become the leading brand in this market.

As I said, there are different stages older people go through as they approach and then enter retirement. These stages are not uniform or linear and are often shaped by events like changes in health, retirement or family circumstances. Our products are designed to meet the different needs across these different stages. Insurance and personal finance products are typically very relevant to customers in their 50s, seeking security from a brand they trust while planning their later life finances. Some of our more active tours and long-haul holidays might also start to appeal with a little more support and comfort than available elsewhere.

As customers age, other parts of our proposition become more relevant. Our equity release product, for example, allows customers with more time on their hands to free up funds to start traveling more or make changes to the home that they likely now spend more time in. And at the other end of the spectrum, our Ocean Cruise customers tend to be in their 70s and ready for a slower pace, more luxurious experience without the hassle of airports and baggage to deal with and the convenience of our door-to-ship car service. These are just examples. But the point is one size doesn't fit all, and we are the trusted brand for customers through all of these stages.

So we're operating in a great market with a customer group that we understand better than anyone else. But success comes from how we use this position to do things differently. This is a busy slide, and I'm not going to talk to every aspect. But what you should take away from it, is how every product we offer is designed with our customer in mind. From an Ocean Cruise experience where every aspect of your holiday is tailored for an older demographic to insurance products with features that matter to our customer base, but aren't provided by standard insurers.

We don't just understand that our customers are different. We are different and our products are different because of that. I've deliberately spent some time on the long-term enduring principles that have served Saga well for 75 years, and they will continue to serve us well as we move forward. We use these principles to guide and drive our decision-making and underpin our shorter to medium-term priorities. You'll be familiar with these priorities on this page. They are consistent with the plans we laid out last year, and we will continue to deliver on them in the same way we have done so successfully this year.

So let me give you some more color on how we are delivering. Ocean remains at the heart of Saga's travel offer with its enduring popularity only getting stronger. We're extremely pleased with the performance we've seen across Ocean this year and are confident in the performance in the year ahead. Load factors continue to grow, driving per diem growth and translating into sustained profit growth, as you can see from the chart in the top right-hand corner.

Our River business is also growing strongly. We combined the River Cruise and Ocean Cruise leadership teams several years ago to ensure a more consistent customer experience and to better drive cross-selling. And you can see from the chart on the right, how this is translating into strong and consistent profit growth with a 48% increase this year. I'm also extremely pleased with the progress we're making in our Holidays business. It's a flexible, capital-light business model that plays to our strengths. Whether it be our range of special interest holidays designed to indulge customers' hobbies and interests or our range of touring holidays with itineraries designed to better suit the pace of older clientele, our holidays are different, and it is this difference that drives demand.

And once again, you can see from the chart on the right, how this is translating into profit growth. Whatever their choice, customers feel the difference of a Saga holiday when they choose to travel with us. Looking ahead for the season, bookings are strong. With our Ocean and River Cruise business unaffected by the war in the Middle East and only a small proportion of our holiday destination impacted, we are confident in the outlook ahead. Our fuel and currency exposures are well hedged into 2027. And so we do not expect inflationary pressures to materially impact that outlook.

As you are aware, we've reset our approach to insurance. We completed the sale of our underwriting business in July and began the rollout of our Ageas partnership in December, starting with motor new business. Home new business follows this month with all renewal business switching later this year. By simplifying our operations, removing underwriting risk and applying our focus more prominently towards sales, marketing and customer engagement, we have already begun to reset the performance of this business. This year, we've seen improved customer satisfaction, growth in policy numbers for the first time in 4 years and a turnaround in profitability, which is up 17% on last year.

This gives us a solid platform from which to continue growing in '26-'27 as we complete the transition to Ageas to fully benefit from the powerful partnership between our 2 businesses. As a data and insight-driven business with a strategy built on our understanding of older people, our publishing business serves as a unique asset, one that we've been expanding and modernizing over the past couple of years. Our print magazine, combined with our hugely popular series of informative newsletters and the engaging multimedia content now available through our website is a powerful customer engagement engine. It is also a huge source of data and insight.

A great example of how we can use our publishing skills to build brand affinity and reach new customers is our fantastic new fortnightly podcast, Experience is Everything. Having only launched in December with our Paul Merton interview, we are extremely pleased with the early success that we've seen. Viewer figures across all platforms have now exceeded 8 million views with new followers finding us all the time. During each podcast, we drive awareness of Saga products and services with exclusive Saga adverts. Finally, before I wrap up with some key takeaways, I wanted to pause on the medium-term targets that we set out this time last year and our performance against them.

You'll remember the chart on the left, showing our plans to deliver GBP 100 million of underlying profit by January 2030 with leverage reduced to less than 2x, albeit with a temporary drop expected in '25, '26. You'll see from the right-hand side that our performance this year has exceeded those expectations in every respect. Having delivered this strong performance and with good visibility for '26-'27, we remain extremely confident in meeting those targets and expect this year to continue ahead of our originally planned trajectory.

So to conclude, we've had a transformational year. Revenues and profits have grown at a group level, but also for each of our core businesses. We've exceeded guidance and with a strong start to '26-'27, have further confidence about our performance this year and our continued progression towards the GBP 100 million target. As you have heard, the impact on Saga of the situation in the Middle East is very limited, and we are successfully hedged. Having established a strong performance culture with consistent delivery built on our simplified and more focused business model, we remain very confident about the future we are building.

I'll now move to questions. Thank you.

Fantastic, thank you very much, indeed for your presentation. [Operator Instructions]

As you can see, we've had a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Thank you to all the investors for submitting those. I'd now like to hand you over to Sharnj Sandhu, Head of Investor Relations, to host the Q&A. If I may just ask you to read out the question where appropriate to do so and direct to the team, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Okay. So when do you expect to start paying dividends?

Thank you. So look, an obvious question given the progress that we're making. Sharnj, I don't know who is in charge of the slides, but perhaps we could bring back the penultimate slide that has our deleveraging profile on that. That's the one. So I think this is a very relevant slide. This is the trajectory we laid out last year, and I've said that we're ahead of that trajectory this year and expect to continue to be ahead of that trajectory.

What I will tell you is we're even more confident about delivering on that GBP 100 million profit target that we laid out only last year and in the deleveraging profile on the right-hand side. Our priority in the early phases of this turnaround is, therefore, to drive profits and reduce our leverage. That's a sensible thing to do. But clearly, as we move towards the right-hand side of that deleveraging profile, optionality opens up, including the ability to start paying dividends and choose how we deploy the rapid deleveraging that we'll be delivering by that stage. So it's right to be starting to think about dividends, but it's not a focus right now. Our priority is delevering and reducing the debt that will then pave the way for dividend and other capital decisions in the future.

Another question probably related to this slide. When you say you are ahead of schedule with the GBP 100 million target, which year do you believe you'll now meet this target? So in which year-end would you achieve GBP 100 million?

Yes. So look, we're not updating our guidance. We're not going to refresh the 5-year view every time we talk to the market. But what you can take from what we've delivered this year is if 12 months ago, our 5-year view was that we would hit that GBP 100 million, and we're ahead of that trajectory today. Then at best or at worst, we are as confident as we were last year or even more confident in delivering that.

If we continue ahead of -- continue to stay ahead of that trajectory, then clearly, the prospect of hitting that earlier grows. But we're a year into that 5-year plan, and therefore, our focus is on driving the growth in profits, reducing our debt and then those upsides will materialize if we continue to focus on that.

A question around AI. Do you consider AI to be beneficial for service businesses? Or will it prove to be a distractor going forward?

Look, I think AI is a mixed bag. It's generally an opportunity for businesses to be more efficient. So we're using AI across our group. And clearly, by partnering with big powerhouse partners such as NatWest, such as Ageas, you can only imagine the sort of investment that they're putting into their AI infrastructure as well, and we benefit from that partnering with that infrastructure. But the heart of Saga is our proposition and AI isn't going to take you on holiday and give you a brilliant experience.

So yes, how we show up for customers, how visible we are in their AI SEO searches and so on, how efficient we can be eliminating administration in our businesses is definitely an AI opportunity. But where we can stand out, which is the way that we always stand out, is delivering a fantastic travel product and other customer experiences in a way that nobody else can. So I think our difference is our opportunity, and that will continue to be the case when AI creates some -- makes other business potentially more generic.

Okay. So a question around shareholder discount. Would it be possible to provide [ channel discounts for cruisers ] going forward?

Yes, we get asked this a lot. And my honest answer on this is the way we drive value for shareholders is driving the share price. So that's our focus. We do value our shareholders, and we appreciate that question. But there isn't an easy way to offer shareholders value that doesn't then damage share price and my focus is on delivering shareholder value and share price increases for our shareholder.

A couple of questions on financial. What are the rates of inflation you're seeing in staff costs in the Cruise division?

I won't do all the talking. I know Mark knows the answer to this. So do you want to jump in Mark and maybe just a broader view on inflation.

Yes. No, I think on a broader view of inflation, I think we've got certainly a lot of confidence in terms of the cost base as we look forward. In terms of our exposure to sort of commodity and FX rates, as I said, we are 100% hedged through to March 2027 and then 75% hedged on oil through to December 2027. So from a broader sort of impact to inflation on the cost base, no real concerns.

In terms of salary inflation specifically, I think we will -- we are seeing something akin to what the market is seeing in terms of the sort of published inflationary numbers. So again, we're not seeing anything that's sort of out of line more broadly. And we've just agreed the sort of forward salary inflation rises for the year to come with both the cruise crew and also the sort of onshore crew as well.

I think from a customer perspective, our customers are resilient and generally are not impacted by sort of the wider economic environment. And I think you can -- when we have seen spikes of inflation or other disruption happening in the economy, our customers have proved to be resilient. And I think you can see that in the strong bookings we have for our travel business. So even with some of the uncertainty that is going on at the moment, our customers are still booking with us.

Perhaps I'll jump in and just give a bit more color on our customer base actually because it's highly relevant right now. and I spent a lot of my time explaining why we are not just another travel business. And indeed, our customers are not just another set of travel customers. They are very different. So if you take our typical customer and bearing in mind, travel is now the largest driver of profits in the group. So if you take that travel customer, they typically worked their entire lives and careers and have got to the point where they have time on their hands and money in the bank. And they recognize there is a sweet spot during which they can enjoy their health and their wealth and start enjoying the travels that they've waited their entire lives to enjoy.

So we've seen a variety of events over the past, well, choose your period, years, decades, whatever, Saga has been around for 75 years. And what we see consistently is our customers don't slow down their travel plans because they've waited their entire lives to start enjoying their travel. I was talking to my next door neighbor over the fence and he was telling me how he's still working, but the only reason he's now working was, he wants to retire into club class rather than economy. Now, he didn't know it when he was saying it, but what he was doing was directly linking his retirement to travel. And that just tells you how people are waiting to enjoy the time and the rewards of their retirement, and that's what we do best.

Specific accounting question. So property assets held for sale within 12 months, can you elaborate on this any further on the resolution in place?

Should I take this one, Mike?

Yes.

So I think, look, we are in active sales processes for all of our sort of noncore properties. I won't comment in terms of those individual processes just because they are ongoing. But clearly, we would expect to exit those properties as those transactions sort of come to completion. And then we will update the market and update investors on the results. I think the 12 months is driven by -- is effectively driven by our view that we will reach a conclusion on those transactions within 12 months.

And look, it's worth just pausing more broadly on that. So was it May last year, I think it was. So we changed our office strategy last year, and we chose to move everybody back to a main head office in Folkestone, which is where our heritage started. And that then meant that we've got a series of disparate properties around the -- well, mostly around Kent that served historic purposes, but are no longer required.

So I'm very keen that we simplify our property estate and having everybody in a single office environment where they come in every day. We still have a hybrid working model, but generally, people are gravitating towards that office and it means we can run the business properly, embed the Saga culture that is different and continue to do the great work that we're doing. So Enbrook is our main head office, and we've got our London office as well.

Thank you. So well done on hedging, on FX and oil. Do you have any concern about supplies in certain ports, any potential supply issues because of the Middle East?

So look, just taking the question more broadly, we're not concerned about the access to fuel supply in our cruises. So we access multiple ports, and we're not seeing any potential disruption risks there. There's a lot of talk about aviation fuel risk. The majority of our flights are through BA and easyJet. And whilst those businesses will be talking about inflationary risks, we've already talked about how we've protected ourselves there. We're not talking about any fears of disruption like some businesses might be seeing in the Far East.

Thank you. A question around Ageas. Are you on track to receive the additional GBP 30 million payment in relation to policies for Motor and Home?

Yes. Look, just to reminder what that is, and I'll perhaps ask Mark to do the balance and consideration point as well. But I think what you're referring to there is a bonus payment that was effectively saying, look, we struck a deal and depending on volumes by the end of May, then there could potentially be an extra payment. I'm not going to guide as to what that pain would be, but what I would help you understand is the GBP 30 million was pretty much a sort of open-ended shoot for the stars target as opposed to somebody -- something that anybody should reasonably say, oh, when do we get the GBP 30 million?

The answer is somewhere between 0 and GBP 30 million depending on how far we outperform the expectations that were built into the transaction. So I would caution people against sort of banking the GBP 30 million. That's not going to be a sensible assumption, but the answer won't be 0 either. Mark, I don't know if you got anything you want to add to that, but you can probably give some color to the remainder of the consideration.

Yes. So there's a number of moving parts around the Ageas consideration and the monies they were paying to us. I think just to try and keep this relatively simple, we have now received everything we are due on the AICL sale. So that was all received last year. We received the GBP 60 million on the go-live of the Affinity partnership deal in December. And we are due to receive a further GBP 20 million when the renewal book starts to transition over to Ageas, which will happen sort of beginning of H2 this year or sort of Q3 this year.

So that will bring us to the GBP 80 million, which we were due to receive for the Affinity partnership. And then as Mike has said, there are a couple of contingent sort of payments that are due, the first one in 2026, and then there is another one in 2032. And I sort of agree with Mike's assessment here. I think they range from sort of 0 to GBP 30 million. The GBP 30 million was a genuine sort of how high can you get the business. But equally, it's not going to be 0 either.

Question on Britannia loyalty scheme.

Yes, you can take that. I'll take that, Sharnj, if you want to read.

Okay, fine. So Britannia loyalty scheme can expand on membership levels, concentration of the tiers, any further developments to expand this offering across other products.

So I'm not going to do the detail on the Britannia loyalty scheme, but I think the tone of the question is, can we broaden that more across the wider group? And look, I don't think you should expect us to be saying that we're going to roll out the Britannia program more widely. But I think the more relevant question is customer loyalty more generally. We have a lot of customers. We brought the businesses a lot closer together now, not least in travel where we're all under one leadership team, but actually all of our businesses are working very closely with each other now.

And therefore, how do we look at rewarding customers that are both Insurance customers and Travel customers, for example, and then those that are opening that we're savings. So look, watch this space. It's not something that has been the key priority right now because clearly, we've had a lot of heavy lifting to do to get the business to this stage. But how we drive cross-sell and reward loyalty is definitely something that's on our mind as we move forward. But we'll need some time to continue to do the things we're doing because there's a whole lot of things that I'd love to be doing, but we need to be patient in terms of where we choose our priorities. But it's certainly a relevant consideration for us as we move on from here.

A question on the blended pro forma rate of 7.6%. I think maybe just talk through the component part of that please.

Yes. So the question is, if you multiply the 7.6%, which we've stated by the GBP 499 million of net debt, you don't get -- you get to a much lower number. Now the net debt number of GBP 499 million is net of the cash that the group is carrying and the interest cost relates to the gross debt. So I think on Page 26 of our preliminary statement, there is an analysis of net debt that allows -- that shows you the sort of gross debt that the group is carrying. So there are 2 lots of effective debt in the business. There's the term loan that we have from HPS, the GBP 335 million and then there are the 2 loans for the ships.

So in total, our gross debt is GBP 623 million. And therefore, the sort of effective interest rate is based off that higher number and not net debt as well. So while there is going to be a savings in interest costs this year versus last year, as you pointed out, it is not based -- you would get to the wrong answer if you use the net debt number.

And Mark, just to elaborate on that because the obvious question that will fall off the back of that is, well, hold on a second, if you're holding all of that cash, doesn't it make sense to repay some of the debt that is costing you that net 7.6%. Do you want to just cover the thinking around that and the opportunities going forward?

Yes, absolutely. So I think our ability to repay sort of debt is dictated to by the sort of terms of the facilities. So I think the most immediate opportunity we have is to repay some of the Cruise debt around the COVID deferrals that we had. That's a relatively small balance now, but it's something that we're sort of actively thinking about. And then clearly, the sort of bigger opportunity, I think, is when does a sort of full refinancing come on to the table. And I think we are sort of thinking through sort of options around that. But I would just caveat we have got a bit of delivery and a bit of deleveraging to do before I think that comes on to the table.

And the corporate debt that we put in place last year with HPS has an 18-month non-call period to mean that we've got to get through that and probably a little bit beyond it before it becomes price effective to start considering repaying that. So it's not that far down the line together with our deleveraging. But yes, interest is an opportunity, as you will have seen actually in that chart we've got on the page there. We do expect to be able to bring interest costs down materially over the life of this plan.

There's no further questions.

Right. I'll do a going, going, gone. Just in case anybody has got a question, they've been storing up for the last moment. No further questions? Okay.

Now I was going to say, Mike, just before we redirect the investors to give you some feedback which is greatly appreciated by you and the team. If I could just ask you just for a few closing comments, please.

Yes. Perfect. Look, hopefully, you will see that we've had a great year. There's been a significant amount of heavy lifting over the last couple of years. The team have done a great job. I'd really leave you with 2 thoughts. Firstly, the level of strategic change that we have delivered really underpins not just the future performance, but is already translating into strong performance today. So that strategic change is directly linked to our ability to drive performance.

Secondly, you can see how having a more focused and simplified business model means we can focus on our customer and drive that performance reset that you're seeing in this year's results. So we've underpinned performance going forward, and that performance culture is going to then compound that. So I'm very happy with the results. And hopefully, you as shareholders can see the progress that we're making. So thank you.

Fantastic. Look, thank you all for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session. You should be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the team can better understand your views and expectations. It's going to take a few moments to complete and it's greatly valued by the company.

On behalf of the team at Saga plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session.

Morning, everyone, and welcome to Saga's results for the year ended January -- 31st of January 2026. My name is Mike Hazell, and I'm the group CEO, and I'm joined today by Mark Watkins, our Group CFO.

I'll start with a quick overview of the year, highlighting the huge progress that we've made strategically and the strong performance that we've delivered across all of our businesses. Mark will then talk you through our financial results in more detail. And finally, I'll provide an update on our strategy and the significant progress that we're making before opening to questions.

This has been a transformational year for Saga, underpinned by strong full year results and a performance that was ahead of expectations. We completed our refinancing in February last year, putting in place a new 2031 corporate debt facility. This has materially enhanced the group's liquidity position, significantly increased covenant headroom and provided funding certainty as we execute our growth plans. We restructured our insurance business through the sale of AICL, our in-house underwriter and the launch of our Ageas partnership.

We now have a less complex insurance business, where we no longer take any underwriting risk and benefit from a more predictable income stream. Travel has now become our largest and fastest-growing driver of profits. To better support this growth, we consolidated our previously separate travel leadership teams into one customer-centric operation. As we simplify our approach to business, we are better able to place our full attention and focus on customer with brand at the heart of our decision-making.

Importantly, though, we've not allowed these changes to get in the way of our continued focus on trading and performance. We've grown each of our core businesses with revenues and profits up across the group and continue to focus -- sorry, and reduced net debt significantly. The progress we've made this year is clear evidence that our plans are working. As we continue to deliver on these plans, we now have even greater confidence with regard to the GBP 100 million profit target that we laid out in April last year.

This slide shows more detail on the strong performance that we've delivered right across the group. As you can see, each of our core businesses have had a very successful year, delivering significant growth in revenue and profit. At the same time, we've been working to support future growth and further strengthening our brand with the launch of new innovative products such as our new savings partnership with NatWest and our brilliant new podcast, Experience is Everything. This is very much, therefore, a group-wide indeed brand-wide turnaround.

Now I'll hand to Mark to go through our financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today to present such a strong set of numbers. I'll spend the next few minutes covering the details of the financial results before covering the outlook for the year 2026, '27.

Saga has exceeded our guidance, delivering a strong financial performance, driven by the trading of our travel businesses and insurance broking. Underlying revenue, which excludes some accounting adjustments and one-off items, increased 11% on the prior period. Underlying PBT from continuing operations of GBP 44.2 million is ahead of our expectations and 19% ahead of the prior year. This was largely driven by the continued growth in our travel businesses and an improved performance in Insurance Broking, offset by higher finance costs associated with the successful refinancing at the beginning of last year.

The group continued to be highly cash generative with available operating cash flow of GBP 205.9 million in the period, an 88% increase, supported by stronger cash generation in Ocean Cruise and the GBP 60 million receipt from Ageas, following the launch of the insurance partnership. A strategic priority for the group is to reduce net debt, and this accelerated this year. At the 31st of January, net debt was GBP 499.5 million, GBP 93.3 million lower than the prior period. The lower net debt and 16% growth in trading EBITDA drove a significant reduction in leverage with our ratio now at 3.7x compared with 4.4x at the same point in the prior year.

I'll now focus on headline underlying profit contributions from each of our business units. Our travel businesses continue to generate strong customer demand, delivering GBP 87.2 million of underlying PBT, a 37% increase on the year before. Our insurance broking business also performed well. Performance was ahead of our expectations. The growth in profits was also achieved alongside growth in policy volumes with 3 of our 4 key products in growth, with motor, travel and PMI all returning to growth after a number of years of decline.

Other businesses and central costs marginally increased. This was due to investment income being slightly lower as the group is carrying less cash than the prior year. The result of all of this is the underlying profit before tax increased to GBP 44.2 million, 19% higher than the prior year and ahead of our guidance. Insurance underwriting is now classified as discontinued, but the strong performance in the first half supported our ability to pay a GBP 10 million pre-completion dividend, and we received an additional GBP 11.4 million of proceeds on completion in July.

I'll now spend some time covering each of our core businesses in a bit more detail, and I'll start with Ocean. Our Ocean Cruise business had an exceptional year, growing underlying PBT by 38% and continuing to show extremely strong forward bookings. Revenue grew 12%, supported by increased load factors and per diems. The load factor in the year was 93%, which compares with 91% in the prior year, and the per diem was GBP 394, 10% higher than the prior year. Underlying PBT of GBP 67.3 million was 38% higher than the prior period, driven by the strong trading performance and cost discipline.

The lower finance costs reflect the continued repayment of cruise facilities, which reduced by GBP 54.2 million in the year. Looking ahead to '26-'27, the forward bookings are strong with booked load factors of 79%, in line with last year and with a per diem of GBP 447, 13% ahead of the same time last year. Now turning to River Cruise. Revenue grew 8%, supported by strong load factors and per diems. The load factor in the year was 89%, flat against the last year despite marginally higher capacity in the period due to the launch of the Spirit of the Moselle in July, our third Spirit class river ship. The per diem was GBP 350, 7% higher than the year before. This supported growth in underlying PBT of 48% from GBP 4 million in the prior year to GBP 5.9 million. Bookings for '26-'27 are strong and currently reflects a load factor of 73% and per diems of 372, currently 5 percentage points and 3% ahead of the same time last year.

Turning now to our holidays business. Revenue grew 10% against the prior year, supported by an 11% increase in the number of passengers that traveled with us. Marketing costs increased by 17% to GBP 12.7 million. This is to drive the expected increase in passengers this year and into next. Underlying profitability was also strongly ahead at GBP 14 million against GBP 10.7 million in the prior period. And you'll see from this slide, '26-'27 revenue growth is set to continue with current full year booked revenue 4% ahead of the prior year, with passengers marginally ahead. This is despite marketing for the current season starting later than the prior year.

Insurance Broking showed an improved performance, generating underlying PBT of GBP 16.9 million. This performance supports an increased investment in policy growth ahead of the Ageas partnership launch with 3 of our 4 main product lines after many years of decline, returning to growth. Motor grew by 73,000 policies and PMI and Travel grew by 41,000. The graph on the right-hand side shows the material drivers of the movements in underlying PBT. The motor contribution before overheads decreased by GBP 4.6 million, driven by the investment in price and marketing to support the higher volumes.

The Home contribution increased year-on-year by GBP 2.2 million, driven by higher renewal margins. Private Medical Insurance performed well with commissions and profit share leading to an increase of GBP 4.7 million. And finally, our Travel Insurance contribution decreased by GBP 0.9 million due to investment in marketing to grow volumes in the period. Net debt reduction is a clear strategic priority for Saga, and I'm pleased with the progress we've made this year. During the year, net debt reduced by GBP 93.3 million to GBP 499.5 million. This excludes the GBP 60 million upfront affinity partnership proceeds with the leverage ratio of 3.7x, also below the year-end level of 4.4x.

Available operating cash flow for the full year was GBP 205.9 million, 88% higher than last year, supported by the stronger cash generation of Ocean and the GBP 60 million receipt from Ageas. Debt service costs have increased due to the HPS refinancing, which was drawn in February last year, and restructuring costs have increased due to the AICL disposal with associated cash proceeds of GBP 68.8 million.

I'll now cover the outlook for '26-'27. We've made significant financial progress this year. We've exceeded our expectations in terms of profitability, net debt reduced significantly. And as a group, deleveraging has accelerated. This is all underpinned by the long-term funding we secured last year. This is due in 2031 and also includes access to an additional GBP 150 million of undrawn committed facilities. So I look ahead into '26-'27, our confidence is high. Our customers are resilient, and we are already seeing a great forward bookings for '26-'27 in our Travel businesses.

Our exposure to the Middle East is minimal, as we typically offer very few itineraries to the region and our fuel and foreign exchange rates are hedged well into 2027. And importantly, we have a lower risk insurance model following the Ageas deal. This gives us significant confidence in our '26-'27 outlook. We expect Ocean Cruise to continue its momentum with further underlying PBT growth expected, supported by strong load factors and per diems with no dry docks planned in the year. River Cruise load factors and per diems are expected to continue to grow alongside increased passenger numbers in holidays.

In Insurance Broking, we expect '26-'27 profitability to be at least in line with '25-'26 and above our previous guidance as we continue to embed the Ageas partnership throughout the year. Finance costs will be marginally lower than '25-'26, reflecting the lower Ocean Cruise ship debt and lower group finance costs. The effective blended pro forma rate is expected to be 7.6%. What this all means for the group is that we expect underlying profitability to take a further step forward in '26-'27. And importantly, our net debt and leverage ratio to continue to decline.

And with that, I'll hand back to Mike for an update on our strategic process.

Thanks, Mark. So a very strong financial performance and confidence in our outlook that will underpin our future growth. Let me now talk to you about the strategic progress that we've made and what you can expect going forward. As I've said, this was a transformational year for Saga and serves as the launch pad for long-term sustainable growth. We've simplified our approach to business, brought focus and strategic clarity into our decision-making and reintroduced a performance culture that is driving results. The sale of AICL and the launch of our home and motor partnership with Ageas means that we no longer take underwriting risk and have materially reduced the complexity of our insurance operations.

Once fully transitioned next year, the headcount for our remaining insurance operations will have reduced from around 2,000 people to fewer than 400, with the majority of colleagues affected by the Ageas transaction transferring across to their business. Meanwhile, revenues and profits are growing as we spend more of our time on customer experience and marketing, leveraging our unique experience in these areas. Travel is now the largest driver of profits in the group, and we've consolidated our 3 businesses, Ocean Cruise, River Cruise and Holidays into a single operation, allowing us to create a more efficient, consistent, focused customer-centric approach across all of our travel products. With this simplification comes greater strategic clarity, focusing on and leveraging our core strengths. At the heart of everything we do at Saga is our customer and our brand.

By simplifying our approach and leveraging partners to deal with operational complexity, we are able to adopt a more focused, customer-led mindset. Saga's brand and long-standing customer principles are now the driver of decision-making across the group. As you can see -- and you can see the results in our performance. We've got a strong -- we have a strong streamlined management team, some of whom are in the room today and have combined a passion for our customer with a reset of performance that is driving success across the group. Nobody understands older people better than us, which isn't surprising because we've been doing this for a long time.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of Saga, and we'll be celebrating the enduring strength of our business and our brand. Over our 75 years of business, we have built up a huge amount of information and experience that we use to ensure we deliver for our customers in ways that others simply can't. Our approach is built on recognizing that our customers have different needs and expectations, and constantly working to better understand those needs and meet those expectations. Through a simple set of principles shown here at the bottom of the page, we seek to protect and leverage the unique competitive advantage we have and in doing so, deliver products and services for our customers that keep them coming back. So we're in a great position to win in a highly attractive market with an affluent, thriving and growing demographic.

As Mark has already touched on, in a volatile world, they are a resilient customer group with wealth and income generally well-sheltered from changing market's conditions. As you can see from the left-hand side of this page, people over 50 already make up 38% of the U.K. population. And over the next 30 years, that will increase to almost 50%. It's a customer group that is typically more affluent and with improvements in medicine and health care, they are living longer and increasingly feel younger and more active than previous generations. I'll go on to show you a breakdown of the different stages of later life because we recognize that there are different stages and different needs at those different stages.

But in general, our customers are looking to make the most of their later years while they have health and wealth to enjoy themselves. It's no surprise, therefore, that travel is at the top of the list of things that they wish to spend their time enjoying. 81% tell us that travel is the thing that makes their life most fulfilling. Not just any travel, though, and you'll see later how we understand and cater for their range of travel needs through a variety of products designed with them in mind. But they also have needs beyond purely travel and those needs, much like in travel are typically not well understood or served.

Saga has built its business on identifying those needs and meeting them better than anyone else. All of the products we offer derive from this. And indeed, there are plenty of opportunities to help older people in ways that we don't today. At the heart of what we do is trust. Our customers trust that Saga understands them and will meet their needs in ways that others don't. And it is by getting that right that we've become the leading brand in this market. As I said, there are different stages older people go through as they approach and then enter retirement. These stages are not uniform or linear and are often shaped by events like changes in health, retirement or family circumstances.

Our products are designed to meet different needs across these stages. Insurance and personal finance products are typically very relevant to customers in their 50s, seeking security from a brand they trust, while planning their later life finances. Some of our more active tours and long-haul holidays might also start to appeal with a little more support and comfort than available elsewhere. As customers age, other parts of our proposition become more relevant. Our equity release product, for example, allows customers with more time on their hands to free up funds to start traveling more or make changes to the home that they likely now spend more time in.

At the other end of the spectrum, our Ocean Cruise customers tend to be in their 70s and ready for a slower paced, more luxurious experience without the hassle of airports and baggage to deal with and the convenience of our door-to-ship chauffeur service. These are just examples, but the point is one size doesn't fit all, and we are the trusted brand for customers through all of these stages. So we're operating in a great market with a customer group that we understand better than anyone else. But success comes from how we use this position to do things differently.

This is a busy slide, and I'm not going to talk to every aspect. But what you should take away from it is how every product we offer is designed with our customer in mind. Our Ocean Cruise ships and our whole cruising approach has been developed for our demographic. For example, they have more single cabins to cater for solo travelers, more crew to ensure high levels of service and our all-inclusive pricing keeps things simple. Travel insurance is a barrier to a lot of older people's holidays plans, and so is included for all Saga Travel products. And it's not just in Travel. In a world where insurance products can feel generic, our products have specific features that are uniquely designed for our customers. For example, great coverage for preexisting medical conditions in our private medical cover or extended empty house home insurance cover for customers who like to take longer holidays.

We don't just understand that our customers are different. We are different and our products are different because of that. I've deliberately spent some time on the long-term enduring principles that have served Saga very well for 75 years, and they will continue to serve us well as we move forward. We use these principles to guide and drive our decision-making and underpin our shorter- to medium-term priorities. You'll be familiar with these priorities on the page. They are consistent with the plans that we laid out last year. And we will continue to deliver on them in the same way as we have done so successfully this year. So let me talk you through some of the detail on the great progress that we're making on all of them.

Ocean Cruise remains at the heart of Saga's travel offer with its enduring popularity only getting stronger. We are extremely pleased with the performance we've seen across this year and confident in the performance in the year ahead. Our ships, the Spirit of Discovery and Spirit of Adventure launched in 2019 and 2021, respectively, providing a luxury experience that is truly unique and differentiated at every stage. And the results speak for themselves. Customer satisfaction is at an all-time high with a TNPS of 83 and repeat rates of 64% show that our customers are quick to book again. Load factors now into the 90%. This, combined with changes to itineraries and more higher quality on and off-board inclusions, has allowed us to continue to drive per diems.

Building on a very successful '25-'26, we've had a strong start to '26-'27 with load factors of 79% and per diems of 13% ahead of last year. The chart on the right shows the growth that we've achieved over recent years, and we expect this growth to continue over the coming years without the need for material incremental capital investment. With ship lives of 30 to 40 years, you can see the opportunity for capital-efficient growth ahead of us. Our River Cruises offer the perfect holiday for customers who want to wake up each morning in an exciting new destination, ready to enjoy the excursions that we lay on, all while surrounded by the boutique luxury they can expect from the Saga Cruise brand, a bit more fast paced than Ocean cruising, but more relaxed than a touring holiday, avoiding lengthy drives and multiple changes in hotels.

We combined the River Cruise and Ocean Cruise leadership team several years ago to ensure a more consistent customer experience and to better drive cross-selling. Customer satisfaction has been increasing ever since and has again stepped up this year. Load factors continue to grow, and this demand, together with ever-improving proposition is driving sustained per diem growth. And you can see from the chart on the right, how that is translating into strong and consistent profit growth with a 48% increase this year. I'm extremely pleased with the progress that we're making in our holidays business. It's a flexible, capital-light business model that plays to our strengths. Our touring holidays offer a relatively energetic holiday for typically younger, more active customers, not quite ready for the more relaxed cruising options that we offer.

Alternatively, we offer a range of carefully selected hotels complete with Saga host available to help our customers get the most out of their holidays. Whatever their choice, customers can expect a holiday designed for them. With more time available, the pace of our tours can be more relaxed and longer hotel stays allow for our customers to more deeply experience the culture and cuisine of their chosen holiday destination. Our ever-expanding range of special interest holidays are designed to indulge our customers' hobbies and passions in ways that more standard holiday businesses don't cater for. Think food and wine, bird watching, even archaeology and history. And this year, we're trialing a series of U.K. holidays for customers that might wish to avoid the stress of airports or indeed supplement their overseas holiday with a shorter U.K. holiday in one of our many historical cities.

Whatever the choice, customers feel the difference of a Saga holiday when they choose to travel with us. And you can again see the benefits of this in our results. Customer satisfaction, always a bit lower for holidays involving third-party hotels and airports, has improved from 45 to 54 this year. And passenger numbers are up 11% and profits have grown 31%. As we continue to build out our proposition, properly reinforcing the things that make us different, you can expect growth to continue. As you can see, bookings and revenues are already ahead on the same point last year. As you're aware, we've reset our approach to insurance. We completed the sale of our underwriting business in July and began the rollout of our Ageas partnership in December, starting with Motor new business.

Home new business follows this month with all renewal business switching later this year, by which point our home and motor insurance business will be a simple, more stable and predictable commission-based income stream. By simplifying our operations and removing underwriting risk and applying our focus more prominently towards sales, marketing and customer engagement, we have already begun to reset the performance of this business. This year, we've seen improved customer satisfaction, growth in policy numbers for the first time in 4 years and a turnaround in profitability, up 17% on last year. This gives us a solid platform from which to continue growing in '26-'27 as we complete the transition to Ageas to fully benefit from the powerful partnership between our 2 businesses.

As a data and insight-driven business with a strategy built on our understanding of older people, our publishing business serves as a unique asset, one that we've been expanding and modernizing over the past couple of years. Our print magazine, combined with our hugely popular series of informative newsletters and the engaging multimedia content now available through our website is a powerful customer engagement engine. It is also a huge source of data and insight. This year, we generated almost 15 million visits to our magazine website, with monthly visits rising by around 50% compared to last year. And we issued around 10 million newsletters a month, achieving market-leading opening rates of almost 50%. A significant proportion of the traffic we are driving to our website are customers new to Saga.

So this is all evidence of the depth of customer engagement our publishing business can drive. A great example of how we use our publishing skills to build brand affinity and reach new customers is our fantastic new fortnightly podcast, experience is everything. Having launched in December with the Paul Merton interview, we're extremely pleased with the early success that we've seen. Viewer figures across all platforms have now exceeded 8 million viewers with new followers finding us all the time. During each podcast, we drive awareness of the products and services we offer with exclusive Saga adverts. Finally, before I wrap up with some key takeaways, I wanted to pause on the medium-term targets that we set out last year and our performance against them. You will remember the chart on the left, showing our plans to deliver GBP 100 million profit by January 2030, with leverage reducing to less than 2x, albeit with a temporary drop in profits anticipated in '25-'26.

You'll see on the right-hand side that our performance this year has exceeded those expectations in every respect. Having delivered this strong performance and with good visibility on '26-'27, we remain extremely confident in meeting those targets and expect this year to continue ahead of our originally planned trajectory. And so to conclude, we've had a transformational year. Revenues and profits have grown at a group level and for each of our core businesses. We've exceeded guidance with a strong start to '26-'27 and having further confidence about our performance this year with continued progression towards the GBP 100 million profit target. As you have heard, the impact of Saga on the situation in the Middle East is very limited, and we are successfully hedged against it. Having established a strong performance culture with consistency of delivery built on our simplified, more focused business model, we remain very confident about the future that we are building.

We'll now move to Q&A.

First, taking questions in the room and then to any online.

Tim Barrett from Deutsche Numis. I had a question first on Cruise -- on Ocean Cruise. Just to understand a bit better your pricing strategy. And as you said, you've had a good uplift, GBP 50 uplift in the per diem. Just really interested in how -- whether you think that can be maintained for the year as a whole?

And then a question for Mark. That Slide 13 on the waterfall of net debt. Just wanted to understand the interaction, if you like, between the working capital inflow and the GBP 60 million outflow. Should we think of those in net terms as sort of the same factor -- partly the same factor?

Okay. So taking your point on pricing and per diem growth, you're right. We've seen great growth over the last few years on load factor and equally great growth on per diems. So as we move forward, with load factors now into the 90%, there is an opportunity to continue to grow load factor to some extent. But clearly, as you head towards 100%, and we'll never get to 100% because there will always be single people in the twin cabin, for example. So the sweet spot for load factors will be somewhere between where we are today, 93% and 100%. So some opportunity there. In terms of per diem growth, that load factor performance is driving demand and excess demand that is then driving per diem growth. So you can see the supply and demand factor now shifting into further growth in per diem.

But it's not all about supply and demand. It's also about the quality of the proposition and us continuing to build out that proposition to drive that demand. So what you'll see each year that we're adding in more investment into the proposition and changes in itineraries that will also drive value. So it's not just about prices going up, it's also about the quality of the proposition that we're investing in every year. But you can certainly expect per diem growth to continue. We've got Nigel Blanks in the audience today. He's done a great job running our Travel business. So it's right that I'd probably give him a moment to correct me where I've gone wrong and take some credit for the performance this year. Anything you want to add, Nigel?

I'd never correct you Mike. I think the point you make is very relevant, that the differentiation that we built up for our product allows us also to differentiate ourself from the marketplace. So one of the things that means that effectively ,there's no direct competitor. So we can price our products to maximize the return and not have to be in situation where we compete with other providers as well. That's quite unique and different from most of the mass market. That's another strand in addition to the point that Mike has made. So again, we're different by design. That's the way our business works, and we continue to maintain that position.

I think there is an important point to make on pricing, and it plays to Nigel's point that we are different and we run our business differently. So our customers book earlier. So we don't play in the late market. We offer our best prices to customers that book first that encourages them to book early, and you can see our customers are booking earlier and earlier every year. And that then gives us confidence very early into the year as to the performance ahead. So when we sit here right now, we've got strong visibility of the year ahead because of that forward booking profile.

And then there's the question around working capital. So you're right. So the GBP 86.9 million inflow from working capital includes the GBP 60 million payment from Ageas. And we've shown that at the end of the bridge, effectively being excluded from net debt. And the reason why we've done that is if you remember when we announced the Ageas deal, we set the GBP 60 million and the GBP 20 million, which we'll receive in the second half of this year. So combined GBP 80 million of proceeds from the partnership.

That effectively was going to fund the working capital unwind as the business transfers over to Ageas. So we've shown it as an inflow, but there is a -- we've excluded it from our net debt calculations because ultimately that cash will leave the business as the renewal book transfers over to Ageas later this year.

Sahill?

Yes. Thank you, Mike. It's Sahil from Singer Capital Markets here. Well done on an excellent set of figures this morning. A few questions from me. Probably looking beyond sort of near-term issues, thinking more medium-term here, probably related to both of these. So when I look at the River Cruise business and where the load factors are at the moment, relative to Ocean Cruise, aspirationally, is it possible for River Cruise to be sort of north of 90% over the medium-term and what would drive that?

And just, again, taking a medium-term view on Holiday business, you've got circa 60,000 customers and your database is well into the millions. I mean, aspirationally, how should we be thinking about that customer base going forward, going from the 60,000?

And the next question is essentially around efficiencies going forward. So the last 12 months, you've obviously had a lot on your plate in terms of executing the strategy and everything around [ Ageas ] and what have you. Stepping back, I almost feel you've got cleaner year or years ahead of you now to focus on the core business. And with that in mind, is there scope for any sort of cost efficiencies to come through over the next few years or so? And if so, where?

And finally, just to update us, I know it's early days, but how the NatWest partnership is going and how we should be thinking about that over the next 12 to 18 months or so?

Okay. So taking those in each. So in terms of River Cruise load factor, so you're right, the load factors of River Cruise are slightly behind Ocean Cruise. You've got to remember that, that is on a slightly slower journey than Ocean Cruise. So what we did several years ago was move River Cruise under our Ocean Cruise leadership team, under Nigel's leadership at that point to recognize that we could frankly do a better job in River Cruise than we were doing at the time and have the qualities of our Ocean Cruise business shining through.

And so what you'll have seen since then is customer satisfaction growing, load factors growing and per diems growing. But it's a year or 2 behind the Ocean Cruise model because we're building out that quality. So that's the first point.

Secondly, we are adding new river ships, and therefore, that impacts load factor because it takes time to sell the new capacity. So we launched the Spirit of the Moselle last year. We launched that in July. Actually, I was on that ship in August, and it was already full. But it takes a while to build out that capacity and there's more capacity as we go forward. And then we'll add new ships in the future. So it is a scalable model that is easier to scale than our Ocean model that has 2 large ships. We can add smaller ships to new rivers or existing rivers. So I guess the takeaway is you absolutely should expect the continued progression of load factors and per diems at rivers. But you should also expect more capacity to come online because that is a scalable model. And our next ship arrives in 2027 being the Spirit of the Lorelei.

In terms of Holidays, yes, you're absolutely right. 60,000, it's a point that I make all the time. We take 60,000 people on a holiday in Holidays. And that is relative to 9 million people on our database. What that demonstrates is the opportunity that we have. But actually, I think our Holidays business, in particular, was the area where when we talk about Saga's ability to differentiate, I think in recent years, that is the area that became a bit generic. So we are building out that proposition and building back that differentiation. So it's taking time to do that. Really pleased with the early progress.

But I would caution you again drawing a straight line between the 60,000 and the 9 million. It would be nice, but it might take some time to get there. In terms of efficiencies, look, I'll ask Mark to cover a little bit more on this, but I wouldn't underestimate the level of efficiencies and cost restructuring we've done during our transformation. That is underpinning a lot of the work that we've done. So we are a lean and more agile operation today. We'll always have an eye on it going forward. But I think we've done some pretty heavy lifting over the last couple of years on costs.

Is there anything you want to add on that?

I think that's right. I think within the Ageas deal, the plan was to reduce the overheads and deliver a significant amount of efficiencies as part of that model. And as Mike has said, we've combined the travel team and delivered some efficiencies by running the Travel businesses differently. And I think as we look forward, we'll always look to run the business efficiently. I think it's an interesting question actually because as the business sort of simplifies, I think, the capacity of the management team to do more is probably where I would focus my attention as opposed to crystallizing lots of cost savings.

Yes. I think it's an important point there. What you are seeing this year, and you'll see going forward is our attention is diverting towards value-adding growth now, as opposed to managing the complex business that we had in the past, and that's really refreshing. And I spent a lot of time with my management team now coming out, talking about actually the great things that they can now focus on rather than sort of with the spanner turning the nuts and bolts of what was previously a complicated business.

And in terms of NatWest, look, I'd broaden it to money, but I'll touch on NatWest and the savings partnership. So there is a great opportunity to grow and expand our range of personal finance products beyond what we do today. They are very relevant products for our customer base. I use equity release as a good example. In the current environment where older people have a lot of equity tied up in their houses, but they have time to spend, either on holidays, either on the house that they want to develop because they're spending more time in or indeed to help the next generation pass that wealth down. So that's a great product that enables us to meet needs in a way that others don't. Our later life mortgage is another product that's designed for older people with equity in their house that are well served by a market that typically serves a younger demographic.

So, we've got strong growth plans there, but those are medium-term growth plans as opposed to the growth we're seeing across our more core Insurance and Travel businesses. You'll remember on that chart that I showed you earlier, there's a blue bar there for money growth that comes towards the back end of the 5-year plan as opposed to the earlier stage. The earlier stage is really about getting the proposition right and investing in that proposition.

NatWest is a big start of that growth plan because we signed that partnership. They're a brilliant brand. It is a very flexible savings model. This year, we're focused on getting it up and running, getting it working, being sure we can deliver the right customer experience. It's actually started very well. We've got over GBP 200 million of deposits already taken. And we only launched that properly in January. So to be where we are, gives me confidence about the growth that we can achieve, but the profits will catch up in the out years as opposed to something that will transfer on profitability to the next 2 or 3 years.

You'll have to wait for the mic to...

Ivor Jones From Peel Hunt. Perhaps I could ask questions one at a time so I don't forget. There's a splendid amount of gross cash now on the balance sheet, not a problem, obviously, but does it create opportunities? I was thinking about paying down the deferred payments earlier or selling the defined benefit pension scheme to get it off the balance sheet? Or is that a problem -- question for 2027?

I won't consume all the oxygen. The sounds like CFO questions.

No, I think it is a consideration for us. And I think we've probably got a bit more work to do this year in terms of delivering the business performance and the deleveraging. And then I think there's a broader capital allocation piece that comes into play. We will always look to optimize the sort of gross debt position. And I think, as you say, the deferred COVID cruise loans is an option for us.

And as I said, I don't want to sort of give too much away, but it is something we're thinking about.

The allocation of other operating expenses in the divisions affects the profits that you report. In Ocean Cruise, it was flat. In River Cruise, it was down a bit. What's in those numbers?

Do you want to take that Mark?

Yes. So broadly, I mean I'll ask Nigel to comment sort of specifically as well. Broadly, it is the cost of running those businesses. So Ocean, Rivers and Holidays have dedicated teams to them and those people will be within those numbers. And then Nigel has a shared management team that sort of oversees all three of those businesses, and there is an appropriate sort of allocation methodology for those shared costs.

I don't know if, Nigel, you want to sort of say anything extra on that.

Yes. I think part of that is in terms of where the focus needs to be. So obviously, the Ocean Cruise business is valid, it's solid, it's stable. It doesn't quite look after itself, but it's steaming in the right direction. Rivers takes a bit more effort because we've had to redirect it and rebalance it, so that will take proportionally more of my time. Same with Holiday business as well. It's just, truing up the allocation of costs.

So why is the River Cruise allocation down '26 over '25?

It's just where we're -- the biggest focus of my time now and my leadership team is into the Holiday business as a greatest amount of sort of surgery, to bring it up to the level. So we just redeploying our team accordingly.

But what you are seeing across the board is the ability under a single team to take savings by running the overall Travel business more efficiently. So yes, we're switching focus between the different businesses to make sure they're all rocking and rolling, but there's definitely inherent efficiencies coming through within that.

That's helpful. And we talked several times about per diem in Ocean Cruise in particular. What is that an average of? What is the highest and lowest per diem that is being charged? So we've got a sense of what the maximum price point, most importantly, someone is prepared to pay, albeit you'll never get necessarily there?

No. I think, Nigel, you'll know better than I will.

Off the top of my head, the lowest price point is around about GBP 210, GBP 220. And the highest price point is around about GBP 650, GBP 680. So suite sweet down to the lowest grade cabin. Remember the lowest grade cabin that we have is still a standard cabin with a balcony. We don't have any inside cabins, which other ship lines have. So it's sort of proportional on that basis.

But you couldn't get the GBP 680 across the whole estate of cabins because that's the suite.

Yes. That's the top echelons of the accommodation. But that per diem, if you were to look and benchmark against the market, is extremely respectful.

Yes. I think the other thing when it comes to per diems is that's where we are today. We talked a lot about supply and demand and the proposition growing per diems across Ocean and River. But I think there's another relevant factor when it comes to Ocean and that is, the cost of new ships hitting the water right now is much higher than the cost of ships -- the costs that we incurred when we rolled out those ships, which means that the pricing point for new vessels landing is going to be higher, and therefore, that also helps us price match and compare favorably to the market.

Great. That's helpful. And you talked about repeat rate. What proportion of sales are from repeating customers?

By which product?

Sorry, in Ocean particularly. I think you talked about a 68% repeat rate.

So that would be a repeat rate of purchases from customers that have cruised with us previously.

Yes, I get that. But of the cruises that were sold last year, what proportion was sold to people who were repeating?

Well, I think that's the point, 64% of people on the Cruise will be those that have come back from previous cruises.

No. So the 68% is a previous 3 years. So it's people that have traveled with us in the past 3 years that have repeated, I don't have the number to hand, but it will be lower than the 68%.

But -- what I'm trying to get at is a potential driver of lower marketing cost because you're addressing existing customers, not previous.

The important thing to remember with that repeat rate is the Cruise customers because it is a big ticket item, don't necessarily buy every single year from us. So I think it would be misleading for us to look at a 1-year purchase repeat rate because that's not customer...

No, sorry, I'm asking a different question, which is the benefit to marketing cost of having repeating customers in there.

Yes. Look, rather than going down a rabbit hole, I think your overall point is right, which is our repeat rates do mean that we spend less on marketing for those customers that are coming back naturally without having the marketing costs. The precise numbers, perhaps we can help [ afterwards ].

Yes. But what we do have as well is the demographic we target is time rich. So the other thing we focus on is customers buy multiple cruises. So it is not unheard of to have a lot of our customers buy 2, 3, 4, 5 cruises in the same year. That drives CPA, that drives marketing efficiencies. If you deliver the right product, people keep coming back.

So as Mike talked about, we invest in the customer, that side of things. That's extremely important is about customer satisfaction drives repeat rates of all levels.

Okay. Any more questions?

Could you just expand on spend on that? Because you talk about unified travel business, but you report in three silos. Can you talk anything about the cross-sell between products to...

Yes. Look, without diving too deeply into this. Look, the reason we consolidated the Travel business was to drive operational efficiencies, customer consistency and make sure we're doing a great job across the business. But frankly, they were running it at silos as well. So I think that by consolidating Ocean and River in recent years, we're already seeing the cross-sell coming through there.

There hasn't been as much cross-sell between Holidays and Cruising as I would like because actually, it wasn't that long ago, you would pick up a holidays brochure, and you wouldn't see that we even did cruises. So one of the reasons we made that change. So I'd very much put the greater cross-selling is an opportunity for the future rather than one that I think we could shine a light on today.

John Goold at Kelso. I just wanted to understand, if I could, the Board's thinking around medium-term financing. You have your target of 2x leverage in 2030. And I wonder to what extent that is a level you would maintain or whether you want to see that lower. And I ask it with kind of two observations, if you like, because around that point that the loans on the ships directly will be near paid off. And also with half an eye and given the shape of your register and the potential for return to the dividend list, dare I ever say. And any kind of just Board thinking around those few points, please.

I'll start, and then I'll have Mark correct me. But I think the way to look at our deleveraging and the 2x target is, firstly, we're ahead of that trajectory. So we're going great guns on that deleveraging and that profit growth. Clearly, as we move through that trajectory, then we have decisions to make as to the target leverage. Right now, we're focused on getting our leverage down because I think we've got -- we -- we've started -- made a great start. We need to deleverage. We need to continue to drive the growth.

As we get towards the back end of that profile, then optionality opens up as to how do you choose to use the capital flexibility that opens up to us? So we're not giving guidance as to exactly where that looks like, but clearly dividend decision has come back on to the table, target capital structure and the extent to which we use some of that ongoing deleverage to then reinvest in proposition. So we're not giving guidance on that today. I think the comfort you should take right now is that optionality is going to open up pretty quickly as we go forward.

But it does mean actually in the not-too-distant future, the opportunity to refinance into a more efficient capital structure also opens up. Anything you want to add to that?

I guess just in terms of where the guidance was from, was we didn't assume that we would do anything in the back end of the plan. So in terms of our guidance, we haven't assumed, we've switched dividends on within that assumption. So completely agree with Mike's point. I think there comes a point where the capital allocation becomes a real question for us. And it's -- as Mike said, we've made a fantastic start in deleveraging, but we've got a bit to go before that -- before that's a question we need to answer.

Any other questions? Any questions online? Well, look, in which case I will wrap up. Look, what I'll leave you with is a couple of things. It's great to see everybody here today. So we're garnering interest, which is great. Mark and I have got a busy few weeks ahead of us.

Look, this is a business that this year has transformed the outlook. So we've done a lot of heavy lifting that puts the business in a great position, but we've also delivered a fantastic set of results. So very proud of what we've done this year. Our team deserve all of that credit. But it really gives us confidence in how we go forward into this year. So I look forward to updating you on more progress next time we see you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Saga plc investor presentation [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received in the meeting itself, however, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from Saga plc. Mike, good morning, sir.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Saga's results for the 6 months ended 31st of July 2025. My name is Mike Hazell, and I'm the Group CEO, and I'm joined today by our Group CFO, Mark Watkins. I'll kick off with a quick overview of our first half performance, and then Mark will take you through the financials in a bit more detail. I'll then provide you with a brief update on our strategy before we leave time for questions.

So I'm pleased to report that we've had a strong first half with the performance ahead of our expectations. We've seen first half revenues increase, profits perform ahead of our expectations and a significant reduction in net debt. Underpinning this performance was the continued momentum that we're seeing in travel. Alongside a strong trading performance, we've also continued to deliver the strategic actions that we previously laid out. We completed our refinancing in February, putting in place a new 2031 corporate debt facility and repaying our 2026 bond maturity and the Roger De Haan loan facility.

To support the delivery of the next phase of our strategy, we've reorganized our management team with new leadership in place across insurance and travel. In July, we successfully completed the sale of our underwriting business with cash proceeds GBP 17 million ahead of our forecast, and we are making good progress on preparations for the launches of both our Ageas and NatWest Boxed partnerships later this year.

In doing so, we're making rapid progress towards a less complex, lower-risk business model with more predictable earnings. That will allow us to focus on our core strengths of customer insight, marketing and data in support of our medium-term growth plans, particularly in travel. Taken together, as we go through this morning, you will see clear progress being made on both underlying trading performance and our strategic execution plans.

This gives me even greater confidence with regard to the GBP 100 million profit target that we laid out in April. On this slide, I've laid out some of our key trading metrics. I'm not going to speak to every line, but you can see even at a glance, the strength of our trading performance across travel and insurance and the foundations that we've put in place for money, all of which sets us up well for future growth. Now I'll hand to Mark to go through our financials.

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today. I'll spend the next few minutes covering the detail of the financial results before covering the outlook for the remainder of the year. Saga had a really good start to the year, delivering a strong financial performance in the first half, largely driven by our travel businesses and our Insurance Broking business. Underlying revenue, which excludes some accounting adjustments and one-off items, increased 7% on the prior period. Underlying PBT from continuing operations of GBP 23.5 million is marginally behind the prior period, but importantly, is ahead of our expectations. This was largely driven by the continued growth in our travel businesses and an improved performance in Insurance Broking, offset by higher finance costs.

This was as expected due to the successful refinancing at the beginning of the year. The group continued to be highly cash generative in the first half with available operating cash flow of GBP 89.4 million in the period, a 64% increase. This does reflect some seasonal strength, which I'll touch on again in a moment. Net debt reduction continued and the position at 31st of July was GBP 515.1 million, GBP 102.1 million lower than 31st of July 2024 and GBP 77.7 million lower than at the year-end. Alongside strong trading EBITDA, which grew 8%, this supported further deleveraging with the total leverage ratio now at 4.3x compared with 4.8x at the same point in the prior year.

I'll now focus on the headline underlying profit contribution from each of our business units. Our travel businesses continue to generate strong customer demand, delivering GBP 41.6 million of underlying PBT in the first half, a 33% increase on the year before. Our Insurance Broking business performed well in the first half despite the anticipated decline in earnings, performance was ahead of our expectations. The standout performance of this business is that after a number of years of decline, policy volumes for motor, travel and private medical insurance have returned to growth.

Other businesses and central costs marginally increased due to lower investment income as the group now holds a lower level of cash than previously. The result of this is that underlying PBT before tax increased from GBP 27.2 million in the prior year to GBP 38.7 million. Insurance underwriting is now classified as discontinued, but the strong performance in the first half supported our ability to capture an additional GBP 17 million of cash from the sale, which completed on the 1st of July.

Debt reduction is a clear strategic priority for Saga, and I'm pleased with the progress made in the period. During the first half of the year, net debt reduced by GBP 77.7 million to GBP 515.1 million with a leverage ratio of 4.3x, also below the year-end level of 4.4x. Available operating cash flow for the first 6 months was GBP 89.4 million, 64% higher than last year. This is driven by a step forward in cash generation from all of our businesses, together with the GBP 10 million dividend paid by our underwriting business.

Net service costs have increased due to the HPS refinancing, which was drawn in February this year and restructuring costs have increased due to the AICL disposal and the Ageas partnership. While the cash generation is strong in the first half, it does include some positive seasonality from both the Ocean Cruise and Insurance Broking businesses. These are benefiting from positive working capital positions with Ocean holding a higher level of customer advanced receipts and policy growth in Insurance Broking also benefiting cash.

So let's now turn our attention to the full year. Bookings for the full year in Cruise are strong. We do, however, expect profitability in the second half to be marginally lower than the first, purely due to the normal seasonality within that business. The peak trading months for our holidays business are typically August to October. And as a result, we expect that underlying PBT will be materially higher in H2 as we benefit from the economies of scale and operational leverage within that business.

In Insurance Broking, we expect the trends that we saw towards the end of the first half of the year to continue for the second half, but a step-up in investment in the second half means that profitability will be lower than the first. What this all means for the group is that the momentum we have seen in the first half gives us confidence to move up our guidance for the full year. We now expect the full year underlying PBT to be in line with the prior year. And importantly, our net debt leverage ratio to be below that of the prior year. With that, I'll now hand back to Mike for an update on strategic progress.

Thanks, Mark. Now I'm going to take you through in more detail the delivery on our strategic priorities and our growing confidence that we're paving the way for long-term sustainable growth. Underpinning everything that we do is our brand and customer insight. So it's worth a moment to remind you how that makes us different. Saga is one of the best known and most trusted brands in the U.K. This is built on our deep understanding of our target customer and our extensive customer database, which together provide us with a competitive advantage that sets us apart from our competitors.

Nobody understands older people better than us, and we have more than 70 years of experience designing products and services exclusively for them. We know who they are. We know what they like, and we know how best to communicate directly with them. This means that in a growing attractive and affluent market for people aged over 50, we are ideally placed to succeed. Our businesses leverage these advantages through a series of consistent principles that I've shown on screen.

With the customer at the heart of our strategy, we deliver quality and value through a suite of differentiated products uniquely tailored for our customer group using the insight that we've developed over decades of experience, all supported by our powerful marketing and publishing channels that drive deep customer engagement. Since joining Saga, I've redoubled our focus on these principles, all of which are now central to our growth strategy. In April, we laid out our medium-term profit target of GBP 100 million and a leverage ratio of less than 2x by January 2030. A strong first half performance gives us even greater confidence in these targets and our time line to achieve them.

Our 4 strategic priorities laid out the routes by which we would deliver these targets, and we continue to make good progress on each of them, progress that will be obvious as I now touch on each business. Travel is now the largest contributor to Saga's profits. In March, we announced that we had combined the leadership of our operations of our previously separate Cruise and holidays businesses under the leadership of Nigel Blanks, previously the CEO of our Cruise division. No longer operating in silos, a single management team ensures consistent, excellent customer experience and a coherent marketing strategy across cruise and all of our holidays.

Best practice is shared across the different product lines and customers are more easily introduced to a wider range of holiday options for their next experience. Saga has been taking older people on holiday since 1951, and we are the experts in catering for their needs. Our customers are time-rich and have money to spend. They like to travel outside of the peak season, enjoying quieter destinations, sometimes quite adventurous ones. What unites them all is that they know Saga can offer when needed, a little more support than our peers to ensure that they really make the most of their holiday. We take our customers to places they might not otherwise go, tailoring the experience to meet their needs. We open the world to them and allow them to enjoy traveling for longer.

By understanding these needs, we create holidays exclusively designed for this age group, catering for them in a way that the mass market can't. By playing to these strengths, we separate ourselves from our competitors and all of our travel businesses are now growing as a result. Ocean Cruise remains at the heart of Saga's travel offer with its enduring popularity only getting stronger. Forward bookings remain strong and repeat bookings are consistently high. This performance is down to the quality of our product and our relentless focus on our guests.

Tailor-made for our customers built on decades of cruising experience, our customer satisfaction and tNPS scores are market-leading. Our 2 ships provide a tailored luxury experience within a boutique cruise environment, setting us apart from the mainstream providers or the mega ships, which constitute the wider market. Smaller and easier to navigate, our specially designed ships provide a tailored experience for our customers' holiday from our nationwide shower car pickup service at the start of their holiday to the number of single cabins we have catering for solo travelers to the start -- to the quality of service and hospitality on board.

And we continually look to improve and refresh our proposition across dining, trips and entertainment. You can see on the screen a picture of our newly launched French restaurant above the Spirit of Discovery. Refined but contemporary, it offers a fantastic dining experience and is proving extremely popular with our guests. We aim to do things differently. I think I might have lost you for a second, so I'll start again. We aim to do things differently, catering for our distinct customer base. And in doing so, we generate strong demand for our product and loyalty to our brand. That demand is driving higher load factors, more early bookings and increasing per diems, the amount customers pay per day as our need to discount reduces.

But importantly, our customers still recognize the great value for money they are getting. This is a trend we are confident will continue as we carry on giving customers what Saga knows how to do better than anyone else. River Cruise holidays are perfect for our customers, sitting between our more active land-based touring options and our no-fly hassle-free ocean cruise experiences. River Cruising offers a gentle river-based touring option without the need for lengthy coach journeys and multiple changes in hotels. Customers wake up each day in an exciting new destination. We moved our River Cruise business under the leadership of our Ocean Cruise team several years ago, and we've been aligning the service experience across the 2 propositions.

As you can see from the page, the results have been very successful with load factors per diems and customer satisfaction performing very well. Building on this success, we are scaling up and adding more ships, this summer launching our newest vessel, the Spirit of the Moselle. Our next river ship is already in development and due to launch in 2027 as part of our ongoing growth ambition for this part of our business. Our cruise performance has somewhat outshone our holidays business in recent years, but we've been making great progress there, too. And there are clear opportunities to build on this under our new leadership structure.

At Saga, we offer holiday options that meet our customer needs, whatever their age. We tend to find a younger, more active customer attracted to our land-based touring holidays, often as a gateway to a more relaxed river cruise in the future. Other customers look to enjoy a hotel stay at an interesting destination through one of our specially selected hotels, complete with Saga hosts on site to make sure they get the most out of their holiday. Whatever their choice, we understand that older customers are drawn to different aspects of travel to those generally catered for by the mass market. With more time available to them, older customers will typically choose to stay a little longer to more deeply experience the destination they are visiting.

They are interested in understanding the language, enjoying local cuisine and visiting culturally significant sites. Beaches and swimming pools are nice, but our customers would typically prefer a nice meal overlooking amazing scenery without the sound of children splashing around behind them. Our holidays offer had over time become a little too generic, missing the opportunity to fully play to these differing demands of our customers, something that our cruise businesses have been doing brilliantly. Now under the leadership of Nigel Blanks, previously the CEO of our Cruise division, we are bringing the focus more squarely back on to our customer and differentiated experiences tailored for them.

It's early days, but as you can see, this refocus, which will take a while to fully flow through to our program, has already started to work. Revenues and profits are continuing to grow from an already strong performance last year and satisfaction levels have materially improved. Our insurance business is in a transitional year as we prepare for our Ageas partnership. Nonetheless, we've made significant steps forward towards our new simplified lower-risk operating model and traded well in the meantime.

Under the new leadership team that we put in place earlier this year, led by Lloyd East, we've been investing in marketing and price to support the long-term growth and prepare us for the Ageas partnership. And the results have been strong. 3 out of our 4 policy lines are now growing after several years of decline. And our customer satisfaction scores reflect the refocus on customer that Lloyd and his team are bringing. Much credit goes to our insurance colleagues for Saga's insurance business being ranked in the top 50 organizations for customer satisfaction by the Institute of Customer Service, 1 of only 2 insurers to be named in that group.

Preparations for our Ageas partnership have continued at pace as we work toward a simplified lower-risk insurance business model. We completed the sale of our underwriting business in July, meaning that Saga is no longer exposed to underwriting risk, and we will transition a large part of our broking operations to Ageas late this year as we go live with that home and motor partnership. I'm particularly excited about how new products and services can drive future growth. In particular, we are focused on creating more ways to engage on a deeper level with our customers more frequently.

Take our money business, for example. The partnership we signed with NatWest earlier this year is exciting in its own right, given that we are expanding our suite of differentiated products. But more than this, it is symbolic of how we could pursue additional innovative partnerships across different business lines in the future. Elsewhere, we've already been deepening our customer relationships with lesser known products within the Saga portfolio. For example, our Saga Wine Club, vintage by Saga, with more than 10,000 customers regularly now buying wine from us. Similarly, our Saga Connections introduction service for older people engages with 13,000 subscribers, checking their connections on the website multiple times a week, significantly increasing their exposure to Saga's wider product set in the process.

These are great ways for us to remain front of mind with customers beyond their annual holiday and insurance renewal. With our primary focus remaining on core travel and insurance propositions, you can nonetheless see the obvious crossover from those businesses to these types of additional service. So there are undoubtedly opportunities to cross-pollinate and build on areas like this to amplify our customers' engagement with Saga. Our publishing business lies at the heart of our customer engagement strategy. Celebrating the lifestyles of older people, it provides deep and regular engagement with our customer group and in a digital world is increasingly a powerful source of insight into what is on their minds and what attracts their interest.

As you can see from this page, our award-winning magazine, newsletters, website and online articles are a fantastic aspirational communication channel that positively portray the lifestyles and interests of older people. This month's magazine encapsulates that perfectly. You will have seen coverage of our interview with Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren splashed right across the mainstream press, in every instance, crediting the Saga magazine in the reporting. And we have a real opportunity to build on this amazing content given the early success we are seeing across our digital channels and platforms.

Our print magazine is already the largest paid subscription magazine in the U.K. By now surfacing this content on our website and refreshing it regularly, we are driving highly engaged customers into the heart of our business, where they spend more time and then come back again to see what else we've got to say. They sign up for more content, allowing us to then communicate with them more broadly. We are now seeing 1.3 million monthly visits to our magazine website, 37% of which are new to Saga. And these numbers are growing each month.

Building on this brilliant content, we are sending around 10 million newsletters each month, covering anything from lifestyle tips to personal finance matters and seeing opening rates of up to 49%, a clear indication of the quality and relevance of that content. By refreshing our website, both our Saga homepage and the magazine site are driving traffic into the Saga environment and exposing customers to individual business unit offers and messaging while they brand out. You should recognize this slide from April, where Mark and I laid out our medium-term targets. So I wanted to update you on our progress.

We previously guided that UPBT, that is underlying profits for '25-'26 would be lower than that of '24-'25, largely due to the increase in financing costs. You will have seen from Mark's slides that as a result of our strong first half performance, we now expect UPBT to be in line with our '24-'25 profit performance. Trading EBITDA is now expected to be ahead of '24-'25, demonstrating the strong trading momentum that we have seen. And with leverage falling, we now expect year-end to be below that of '24-'25. So while it is too early to update any medium-term projections, we have clearly made a strong start and are ahead of where we expected to be this year, giving us even greater confidence as to the level and timing of those medium-term targets.

Finally, to wrap up, we've made significant progress in the first 6 months of this year. We've delivered a strong financial performance, particularly in travel, and we have significantly reduced our debt. Alongside this, we've achieved some significant strategic milestones toward our more customer-focused, simplified business model going forward. That puts us in a great position as we head towards the full year. Looking ahead, we expect to go live with our Ageas insurance partnership in Q4 2025, beckoning the start of a significantly less complex, lower-risk insurance model for us next year.

We will continue to build on the momentum we are seeing across our travel businesses, leveraging the benefits we are already seeing from the combined operations that we've now put in place. And we'll go live with our NatWest Boxed partnership at the end of this year, which will start us down the path of engaging customers in more differentiated products and services beyond our travel and insurance offerings. In short, we'll keep delivering on what we said we would do. That concludes this presentation. I'm happy to now move to questions.

Perfect. Mike, Mark, if I may just jump back in there. And thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. I'll just bring back up your cameras there for the Q&A [Operator Instructions] But just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, just I'd like to remind you recording of the presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your Investor dashboards. And [ Sharnj ], you can see that we have received a number of questions throughout your presentation this morning. And thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. But Sharnj, at this point, if I may just hand over to you to chair the Q&A with the team. And if I pick up from you at the end, that would be great. Thank you.

Thank you. And Mike, it's been -- the question here is it's been very helpful to see the group's projected profits through to year 2030. Could you please advise at what level of profitability you expect to start paying dividends?

Okay. That's a great question. Thank you. It might be helpful just to bring up Slide 36 towards the back of the pack. Are we able to do that? I can then just bring that context.

No, we don't have the appendix in it.

No, it's the guidance chart. Sorry, of course, it's a different slide for this one. Yes. So look, I think this is a helpful chart just to have in front of us when we talk about the prospects of dividends in the future. Our focus right now is delivering on what we've laid out, which is growing our profits and then generating the deleveraging, very confident in all of the building blocks towards that. And you can see those on the page. The way to look at dividends is right now, our priority is to reduce the level of debt in the business and drive profits.

However, as we look at that chart on the right, you can see that our leverage reduces quite dramatically over that time scale. So whilst dividends are not on our minds right now, as we move towards the right-hand side of that chart, between years 3 to 5, then dividends become a nearer prospect. We're not going to give specific guidance as to what point we would switch that on. But clearly, our focus in the short term will be reducing debt. And then as we move into the middle and then towards the right-hand side of that chart, we've got greater flexibility in our capital structure to think about dividends, investments and just a lot of options on the table then. But right now, we're focused on delivering the profit growth and the deleveraging that would unlock that optionality.

So a question on debt. So how much of the debt is fixed and how much is variable? And how will the fall in interest rates speed down the debt payment?

Mark, do you want to take that?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Mike. So no, great question. So just for context, we've got 2 forms of drawn debt in the group. We've got a term loan facility, which is GBP 335 million. And we have 2 facilities that are drawn for the ships, which is GBP 316 million of gross debt. Both are fixed interest rates. So the term loan, if you look into the back of our presentations, it is a variable rate instrument, but we have hedged that variable rate. So effectively, we fixed that for the next few years. So all of our debt is now fixed interest rate. In terms of falling interest rates and how quickly or whether there will be a benefit to reducing debt because of the falling interest rates. As I said, the debt is now fixed interest rate. So falling base rates that doesn't impact our interest costs.

So congratulations on your turnaround strategy. There seems to be a rebalance between travel and the insurance business. Could you please provide the ratios, the revenue and profit ratios between these 2 distinct businesses?

So Mark, I don't know if you've got the ratios to hand, but to give the bigger picture, look, for a long while, we've had a very large insurance business with significant complexity, cost and volatility. And alongside that, we've had a brilliant travel business. Clearly, those that have been following us for some time will see the ebbs and flows that have come with having -- running a large and complex insurance business. But the way I look at this is, first and foremost, we're not an insurance business. We're not a travel business. We are a business that understands the needs of older people and delivers products and services to make sense of those needs.

And over time, those -- our ability to meet those needs and indeed, those needs themselves will change. When we look at those needs right now, just taking insurance in the first instance, the best way to meet those needs, offering brilliant service, but also the right price and cover is by partnering with first-class insurance businesses that do their side of the equation brilliantly whilst we help them deliver products and services for older people using the insight and expertise that we've developed over many years. So very confident that we've got the right insurance model going forward. But it does mean that as we rapidly grow our travel business and adopt that lighter capital, lower cost insurance model, the balance between insurance profitability and travel will change.

Hence, this slide does call out to a much greater extent, the strengths we have in travel, which will be the lion's share of our profits certainly in the near term whilst we then continue to grow our insurance business. On this chart, which is sort of rapidly becoming my central slide to talk to, you can see where we go over the next few years from a -- starting from a year where the majority of our profits will come from travel, we'll continue to grow ocean and holidays profitability. But you can see that we do have growth ambitions for insurance. So what we're doing is not shrinking our insurance business, but creating a platform to then grow from by doing what we're great at and doing what Ageas so brilliant on the insurance operations side.

And we've got ambitions in money and more broadly to launch new products that will introduce growth further down the time scale. So you're right to call out our heritage in travel and our strength in travel is by no means a side business. That will be core to our proposition, but I wouldn't see insurance as not being core because actually, if you look at it from a number of customers as opposed to profitability, then actually the number of customers in insurance will always be significantly higher than the number of customers in travel. So we do need to make sure that we focus on both. The balance between profitability of the 2, you probably got that in front of you now, Mark. So do you want to just quickly call that out and then you've got the growth on the page?

Yes. I mean if you look back over the interim results, so for the first 6 months of this year, the travel business generated around 75% of the group's revenue, and it was a little bit higher on a profitability basis. If you take our gross profit before sort of central costs, it accounted for about 83% of our profitability. As the question sort of states, that ratio was very different in the past. And that's a reflection of the strong growth we have seen within the Ocean Cruise business as that business has grown very strongly over the past few years, i.e., sort of pre-COVID, predelivery of the new ships.

How much of the growth in Ocean and River Cruise is attributable to pricing versus passenger volumes?

Yes. So again, this is sort of laid out within the presentation. So if you look at the load factor statistics within our Ocean Cruise business, we saw a 4 percentage point increase within our load factor. That is how many people are [indiscernible], how many people are traveling with us. And we also quote a per diem figure, which is how much passengers will pay per night to stay on our cruise business. That increased year-on-year 8% to GBP 391.

So we've got a balance between load factor growth, i.e. how many passengers and how utilized the ships are and also price growth in the period. I think when we look forward, the ships are now operating pretty much at full capacity. And therefore, we expect over the next few years for the growth in that business to be driven by per diem growth as opposed to load factor growth.

Any further news on unwinding property held for sale?

Mark, do you want to give a quick update? Not much to say.

Yes. So our property portfolio, the really quick update is that there is no news. So we still carry those properties as held for sale, and we're still exploring various avenues to sell those properties.

How do you prioritize debt repayment, business investment and shareholder returns with the incremental...

Do you want me to cover that again, Mike?

I'm conscious that you too seem to be breaking up a bit. I don't know if I'm breaking up as well. But it might just be worth reading that question again so that people can hear the question properly.

How do you prioritize debt repayment, business investment and shareholder returns with incremental cash going forward?

Yes. Okay. So Mark, do you want to answer that?

Yes, sure. So it's a very similar question to the one we had around dividends and what the criteria would be for us to start paying dividends. So as you can see on the chart here, our priority at the moment is to reduce leverage, to reduce debt. But as we move through that journey through to the end of the chart on the right-hand side, we effectively have more options in terms of how we allocate capital across the business. So dividends will clearly be a topic that comes back on to the agenda towards the right-hand side of that chart. What I would say is that the HPS financing that we put in place at the beginning of this year has allowed us to make longer-term decisions in terms of investing in the business. So we are now investing appropriately into the business in terms of a medium, long-term horizon to effectively grow the business over the plan period. Dividends and what we do with excess capital will be something that we guide people to closer to the time.

Yes. Look, I think that long-term point is really important. We've delivered a lot of strategic progress in the last 6 months and indeed the last couple of years that puts us in a position to now start taking some long-term decisions. How we deliver shareholder return in the short term is by reducing our debt and growing our profits. And that comes with making sure that we're investing for the long term as part of that strategy. As we move through the profile, profits improve, debt reduces, leverage reduces. And then as we said earlier, the prospect of dividends increases as we go through that curve. But that's the order of priority.

What does your customer insight tell you is the next unmet need for people over 50?

So I'm really pleased to get questions like this because it encourages us all to be thinking about Saga as not just a travel or insurance business, as I said earlier. But likewise, what I've also said repeatedly is there are many areas where older people are not well served today, but -- and we will explore those as part of our new business and new opportunities exploration. But what we're not going to do is start calling out things that we may or may not get involved in today only to apologize and let people down in the future.

So we will be exploring new things, but we'll share those with you and the market at the point we've got something tangibly in process rather than simply overpromising and then under delivering. You'll start to get to know Mark and I'm pretty well over as we go forward. And I want to be promising and then delivering on things that we then know we can deliver. So yes, there are many areas where we think we can expand into next, but we'll talk to you about those when we've got something tangible in the pipeline.

Okay. So what plans do you have to grow the cruise business? Any new ships or any new partnerships?

Okay. So the cruise business comes with Ocean and River and there's different dynamics between those 2. So firstly, the numbers you've got on the page here are based on a 2-ship ocean cruise model. The growth prospects with that are being driven by maximizing demand, which is driving load factors and there is continued load factor growth to come, albeit we're now in the 90%. But as we get into those levels, we then are able to then drive our per diems, which is the amount that customers pay per day, not by putting up our headline prices much, but more by simply not having to discount and market as heavily in order to drive the demand because the demand is already there from the repeat business.

So we've got significant levels of demand, and that is now driving up the per diems. And alongside that, we're also putting more value into the proposition, which again means that customers get more value from their per diems. So the growth in Ocean will come from load factor growth to a point and then ongoing continued per diem growth driven by that strong demand. Both of those things are at play with our River Cruise business as well because we've got strong load factors and rising per diems. So a very similar dynamic. However, the benefit we have in River is we're adding new ships.

And so unlike having to pay hundreds of millions of pounds for an extra ocean ship, scaling up our river fleet is actually a much smaller charter-based model, and therefore, we're able to scale up more easily. Therefore, you will see that we've added the Spirit of Moselle this summer, and we've got another ship arriving in 2027, and that won't be the end of that pipeline. So you can expect to continue to see expansion in the river fleet alongside the growth in load factors and per diems driving that growth.

Can you provide some guidance on the commission structure of the new insurance partnership?

So I think the way to look at the insurance partnership is, firstly, it is helpful to call out the commission structure because that is an important aspect of the Ageas model. So we are moving away from taking high-risk volatile earnings from an end-to-end underwriting through to broking insurance model. So we are moving to Ageas where our home and motor business model, which is the lion's share of our policy numbers will be delivered through Ageas taking the underwriting risk, managing the operations and then we bring our customer insight, marketing and earn a commission of those policies as opposed to taking the insurance risk associated with those policies.

So just to emphasize, therefore, that it is a more certain, stable and predictable income stream that is commission-based. In terms of guidance for commission, we're simply not able to share what the commission rates are because you can appreciate Ageas won't want us talking about what our commercially confidential commission rates are. However, to help people think about what the earnings profile of the insurance business will be post the Ageas partnership launch, what we've guided to is how much money we expect to make in the first full year of the partnership.

So -- what we said is in the first full year post transition, we expect to make the same level of profits from our broking business as we did last year.

Last year, we made GBP 14.5 million of profit in our broking business. And therefore, in the first full year of the transition on a commission-based model with greater line of sight and growth prospects, we expect to start by making that amount of money and then grow from that base in line with the chart that you can see on the page here. Importantly, just to help you understand what we mean by the first year post transition, we go live at the end of this year, and then we spend the next 12 months migrating policies across to the Ageas platform.

So as policies renew and as new business is put on to the books, every new policy or renewal will go on to the Ageas platform, but a policy that renews the day before we go live at the end of this year will effectively not move across to the Ageas platform for, well, 1 year minus 1 day. So that's why it takes a little while to move across. Therefore, once we've fully been through that 12-month migration of policies, thereafter, we're fully on to the Ageas platform, we're fully on to their operational system and into the new model. And from that point on, we'd expect to make at least as much as we did from the old insurance broking model, but on that lower risk, more certain income profile growing from that base.

So NatWest would not seem to be a natural destination for competitive savings products. Why were they selected? And how do you expect them to help you transform your money business?

So firstly, NatWest has got deep reach into the U.K. consumer. There is a significant crossover between our customer base and NatWest as a trusted brand. Nobody should look at NatWest savings products as the benchmark for our proposition. What we have looked to do is to create a product that we believe would be highly competitive and highly differentiated for our customer set and take that into the market. So I wouldn't be hung up on what NatWest do today.

What we're doing is launching with NatWest Boxed partner who is creating a platform for us to effectively bring to market different products to those which NatWest themselves offer. But we have a bit like Ageas, we have the whole infrastructure behind NatWest. That means that we can bring our customer base, our expertise and our insight and create products and services, starting with the savings product that is different to what's on the market today and give our customers great value and service. So I'm confident that there will be an exciting product and indeed more products to come in the future from that channel.

The insurance industry is seeing a shift from repair and replace to predict and prevent, but this involves smart technology. How can Saga and Ageas help people over 50 make the most of this shift?

So I'm going to read this question again because it's taken a while to digest. So insurance is starting to see a paradigm shift from repair and replace to predict and prevent given that the predict and prevent often involves smart devices, how might Saga and Ageas approach this to ensure all the people. Look, I'll answer this question more broadly. Our job is to -- in insurance and indeed across a lot of complex markets is to make our customers' lives easier and make this sort of approach more simple. So if you think about not just in our insurance business, but across our money business as well, we spend a lot of time on the phone to customers.

We've got a lot of channels through which we communicate to customers, not least our newsletters, where we're giving advice to customers as to how to best approach whatever challenge they might have in relation to a product or a market. So -- what I would suggest here is we are better placed than anybody else to help older customers in this market and indeed any other market. As we move into preparing for the Ageas partnership, we're spending a lot of time to make sure that Ageas' operations and service levels replicate the quality service levels that we offer today. And that includes making sure there's always somebody to speak to, to help with whatever that customer needs help with.

And I think your question here is poking at older people need a bit more support than more generally, and that's what Saga does best. So I would suggest that we've both got the people at the end of the phone that can help our customers with these sorts of challenges, but also that's where our magazine and our newsletters are giving brilliant advice every day. And any of you that aren't on our new letter distribution list, get yourself on there because I think you'll see very, very quickly how that is exactly what we're doing through those newsletters.

We've got one last question. If the stock market dislikes debt and this dictates your strategy, why don't you offload the ships and move to a capital-light model?

Look, I think the way to look at that is our ships are brilliant assets, and we want to keep hold of them. And if you look at the rate at which we're deleveraging and the strategy we've got for growing our profits, there is no need to offload our ships. In fact, it would be nice to have a third one at some point, but let's not get distracted by that. So if you look at the plan we've got, and it's on the page there, look at the rate of deleveraging that will come and profit growth that will come simply by doing what we are doing today. If we were to sell or lease and sell back ships, trust me, that profit profile on the left would look very, very different.

So you might not have a lot of debt, you wouldn't have a lot of profit either. So the right approach here is to take the assets that we've got, recognize they are brilliant assets within our control and use them to drive our profitability. And that profitability will pay down the debt. And as you can see on the page here, we are not very far away from being in a very strong position in terms of profitability and leverage. And what you've seen from the last 6 months is that's not a hope. That is something that we're delivering on rapidly as we move through this time line.

Perfect, guys. If I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time then addressing all of those questions that came in from investors. And of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation just for you to review to then add any additional responses where appropriate. But Mike, perhaps before really now just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that would be great.

Thank you. So look, just to summarize, I think you will have seen pretty clearly the progress we've made in the last 6 months. We're trading the business well. The benefit of the strategy we're applying is it's giving us the breathing space to now make long-term decisions and deliver on that long-term plan that we've had in front of us for most of this presentation, and it's working.

So you should look at Mark and I and indeed our wider management team as a team that will continue to deliver on what we say we're going to do in the last 6 months, and that's translated into trading performance ahead of our expectations and delivery on all of our strategic actions in line with our plans. So we'll keep doing that, and we'll see you in 6 months' time to show you how we've continued to do that through to the full year.

Perfect, Mike. That's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Saga plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.

Thanks, everybody.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Saga's results for the 6 months ended 31st of July 2025. My name is Mike Hazell, and I'm the group CEO, and I'm joined today by our Group CFO, Mark Watkins. I'll kick off with an overview of our first half performance. And then Mark will take you through the financials in detail. Finally, I'll provide a brief update on our strategy before we open for questions at the end.

I'm pleased to report we've had a strong first half with a performance ahead of our expectations. We've seen first half revenues increase, profits perform ahead of our expectations and a significant reduction in net debt. Underpinning this performance was the continued momentum we are seeing in travel. Alongside a strong trading performance, we've also continued to deliver the strategic actions that we previously laid out.

We completed our refinancing in February, putting in place a new 2031 corporate debt facility and repaying our 2026 bond maturity and the Roger De Haan loan facility. To support the delivery of our next phase of our strategy, we have reorganized our management team. The new leadership team in place across insurance and travel now in place.

In July, we successfully completed the sale of our underwriting business with cash proceeds GBP 17 million ahead of our forecast, and we're making good progress on the preparations for the launches of both our Ageas and NatWest Boxed partnerships later this year. In doing so, we're making rapid progress towards a less complex, lower-risk business model with more predictable earnings that will allow us to focus on our core strengths of customer insight, marketing and data in support of our medium-term growth plans, particularly in travel.

To that end, we were delighted to launch the latest addition to our river fleet earlier this year, responding to the demand we are seeing for our boutique cruising offer. I was on board the Spirit of the Moselle last month, and she's an amazing ship. Taken together, as we go through this morning, you will see clear progress being made on both underlying trading performance and our strategic execution plans. This gives me even greater confidence with regard to the GBP 100 million profit target we laid out in April.

On this slide, I've highlighted some of our key trading metrics. I'm not going to speak to every line, but you can see even at a glance, the strength of our trading performance across travel and insurance and the foundations we have put in place for money, all of which set us up well for future growth.

I'll now hand to Mark to go through our financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today. I'll spend the next few minutes covering the detail of the financial results before covering the outlook for the remainder of the year.

Saga had a really good start to the year, delivering a strong financial performance in the first half, largely driven by our travel businesses and insurance broking. Underlying revenue, which excludes some accounting adjustments and one-off items, increased by 7% from the prior period.

Underlying PBT from continuing operations of GBP 23.5 million is marginally behind the prior period, but importantly, is ahead of our expectations. This was largely driven by the continued growth in our travel businesses and an improved performance in insurance broking, offset by higher finance costs. This was expected due to the successful refinancing at the beginning of the year.

The group continued to be highly cash generative in the first half with available operating cash flow of GBP 89.4 million in the period, a 64% increase. This does reflect some seasonal strength, which I'll touch on again in a moment.

Net debt reduction continued, and the position at the 31st of July was GBP 515.1 million, GBP 102.1 million lower than 31st of July '24 and GBP 77.7 million lower than at the year-end. Alongside strong trading EBITDA growth, which grew 8%, this supported further deleveraging with a total leverage ratio now at 4.3x compared with 4.8x at the same point in the prior year.

I'll now focus on the headline underlying profit contribution from each of our business units. Our Travel businesses continued to generate strong customer demand, delivering GBP 41.6 million of underlying PBT in the first half, a 33% increase on the year before. Our Insurance Broking business performed well in the first half. Despite the anticipated decline in earnings, performance was ahead of our expectations. The standout performance of this business is that after a number of years of decline, policy volumes for motor, travel and our private medical insurance have returned to growth.

Other businesses and central costs marginally increased due to lower investment income as the group now holds a lower level of cash than it previously did. The result of this is that underlying profit before tax increased from GBP 27.2 million in the prior year to GBP 38.7 million. Insurance underwriting is now classified as discontinued, but the strong performance in the first half supported our ability to capture an additional GBP 17 million of cash from the sale, which completed on the 1st of July.

I'll now spend some time covering each of our core businesses in a bit more detail, and I'll start with ocean cruise. Our Ocean Cruise business had an exceptional start to the year, growing underlying PBT by 23% and continuing to show extremely strong forward bookings. Revenue grew 8%, supported by an increased load factor and per diems. The load factor in the first 6 months of the year was 94%, which compares with 90% last year, and the per diems worth GBP 391, 8% higher than the year before.

Underlying PBT of GBP 34.5 million was 23% higher than the prior period supported by cost discipline and lower finance costs. The lower finance costs reflect the continued repayment of the cruise facilities. This has now reduced to GBP 55.6 million per year due to the repayment of the first COVID deferral loan. Looking ahead to the full year, the booked load factor and per diems are very strong, currently 2 percentage points and 10% ahead of the same time in the prior year, respectively. For the '26-'27 season, the booked load factor is 3 percentage points ahead with the same time last year with the per diems continuing to increase at 13% ahead.

Now turning to our River Cruise. In the first half, we successfully launched the Spirit of the Moselle, our third Spirit Class rivership. The timing of this launch meant we operated with marginally lower capacity in the period, driving revenue to be flat against the prior period. The 93% load factor in the first half was 7 percentage points higher than the last year and the per diem of GBP 364 was 7% higher, reflecting the strong demand for our river cruises. This supported growth in underlying PBT of 34% from GBP 2.9 million in the prior year to GBP 3.9 million.

Bookings for the full year are strong and currently reflect a load factor of 87%. The per diems of GBP 351 is ahead of the same time last year, albeit lower than H1, reflecting expected seasonality. Bookings for next year are also in a good position with strong load factors maintained alongside growing per diems.

Turning now to our holidays business. Revenue grew 14% against the prior year, supported by a 13% increase in the number of passengers traveling with us. Underlying profitability was also strongly ahead at GBP 3.2 million against only GBP 0.3 million in the prior period. This serves to validate our step-up in the level of marketing to support bookings. As you'll see from this slide, revenue growth is set to continue into the second half of the year, with current full year booked revenue 14% ahead of the prior year, with passengers 12% ahead. The team are now focusing their attention on driving demand for next year's bookings.

Insurance Broking also showed an improved performance in the first half, generating underlying PBT of GBP 8.9 million. This performance supported an increased investment in policy growth ahead of the Ageas partnership with 3 of our 4 main products, after many years of decline, returning to growth. Motor grew by 26,000 policies and the combination of PMI and travel grew by 5,000. This investment is expected to continue into the second half, further driving policy volumes ahead of the go-live date with Ageas.

The graph on the left-hand side shows the material drivers of the movements in underlying PBT. The motor contribution before overheads decreased by GBP 0.6 million, driven by higher renewal margins, particularly for 3-year fixed-price policies as market-wide net rates reduced, offset by higher investment into volumes.

Home is the most significant driver of the overall decline with a GBP 6.2 million lower contribution as net rate inflation, which was more pronounced within our panel, led to a reduced competitiveness and 19% fewer policy sales. Private Medical Insurance benefited from lower net rate inflation together with the GBP 2.6 million profit share from the Bupa partnership.

Travel insurance remained broadly flat with policy volumes growing in the period. Our insurance underwriting business, AICL, was sold to Ageas on the 1st of July and therefore is treated as discontinued throughout these results. As you can see, AICL performed strongly prior to disposal generating an underlying PBT of GBP 15.6 million. This supported our ability to generate an additional GBP 17 million of net cash from the disposal with AICL paying a GBP 10 million pre-completion dividend and there being a GBP 7 million positive adjustment through the completion mechanism.

We received GBP 57.9 million on the completion date, representing 90% of the proceeds, with the remaining 10% due in October. There remains a further GBP 2.5 million payable on the go-live of the partnership.

Debt reduction is a clear strategic priority for Saga, and I'm pleased with the progress made in the period. During the first half of the year, net debt reduced by GBP 77.7 million to GBP 515.1 million, with a leverage ratio of 4.3x also below the year-end level of 4.4x. Available operating cash flow for the first 6 months was GBP 89.4 million, 64.3% higher than the last year. This was driven by a step forward in cash generation from all of our businesses together with the GBP 10 million dividend paid by underwriting.

Debt service costs have increased due to the HBS refinancing, which was drawn in February this year and restructuring costs have increased due to the AICL disposal and the Ageas partnership. While the cash generation is strong in the first half, it does include some positive seasonality from both the Ocean Cruise and Insurance Broking business. These are benefiting from positive working capital positions with Ocean holding a high level of customer advance receipts and policy growth in Insurance Broking also benefiting cash.

So let's now turn our attention to the full year. Bookings for the full year in cruise are strong. We do, however, expect profitability in the second half to be marginally lower than the first, purely due to the normal seasonality within that business. The peak trading months for our Holidays business are typically August to October. And as a result, we expect the underlying profitability will be materially higher in H2 as we benefit from economies of scale and operational leverage.

In Insurance Broking, we expect the trends that we saw towards the end of the first half of the year to continue for the second half, but a step-up in investment in the second half means that profitability will be lower than the first. What this all means for the group is that the momentum we have seen in the first half gives us confidence to move our guidance for the full year. We now expect the full year underlying PBT to be in line with the prior year and importantly, our net debt leverage ratio to be below that of the prior year.

And with that, I'll hand back to Mike for an update on strategic progress.

Thanks, Mark. Now I'm going to take you through more detail on the delivery of our strategic priorities and our growing confidence that we are paving the way for long-term sustainable growth. Underpinning everything we do is our brand and customer insight, so it's worth a moment to remind you how that makes us different.

Saga is one of the best-known and most trusted brands in the U.K. This is built on our deep understanding of our target customer and our extensive customer database, which together provide us with a competitive advantage that sets us apart from our competitors. Nobody understands older people better than us. And we have more than 70 years of experience designing products and services exclusively for them.

We know who they are, we know what they like and we know how best to communicate directly with them. This means that in the growing attractive and affluent market for people aged over 50, we are ideally placed to succeed. Our businesses leverage these advantages through a series of consistent principles that I have shown on the screen.

With the customer at the heart of our strategy, we will deliver quality and value through a suite of differentiated unique products uniquely tailored for our customer group using the insight we have developed over decades of experience, all supported by our powerful marketing and publishing channels that drive deep customer engagement.

Since joining Saga, I've redoubled our focus on these principles, all of which are now central to our growth. In April, we laid out our medium-term profit target of GBP 100 million and a leverage ratio of less than 2x by January 2030. A strong first half performance gives us even greater confidence in these targets and our time line to achieve them. Our four strategic priorities laid out the routes by which we would deliver these targets, and we continue to make good progress on each of them, progress that will be obvious as I now touch on each business.

Travel is now the largest contributor to Saga's profits. In March, we announced that we had combined the leadership and operations of our previously separate Cruise and Holidays businesses under the leadership of Nigel Blanks, previously CEO of our Cruise division. No longer operating in silos, a single management team ensures consistent, excellent customer experience and a coherent marketing strategy across both Cruise and all of our Holidays.

Best practice is shared across the different product lines and customers are more easily introduced to a wider range of holiday options for their next experience. Saga has been taking older people on holiday since 1951, and we are the experts in catering for their needs. Our customers are time rich and have money to spend. They like to travel outside of peak season, enjoying quieter destinations, sometimes though quite adventurous ones.

What unites them all is that they know Saga can offer, when needed, a little more support than our peers to ensure they can really make the most of their holiday. We take our customers to places they might not otherwise go, tailoring the experience to meet their needs. We open the world to them and allow them to enjoy traveling for longer.

By understanding these needs, we create holidays exclusively designed for this age group catering for them in a way that the mass market can't. By playing to our strengths, we separate ourselves from our competitors and all of our travel businesses are now growing as a result.

Ocean Cruise remains at the heart of Saga's travel offer with its enduring popularity only getting stronger. Forward bookings remain strong and repeat bookings are consistently high. This performance is down to the quality of our product and our relentless focus on our guests.

Tailor-made for our customers, built on decades of cruising experience, our customer satisfaction and TMPS scores are market-leading. Our 2 ships provide a tailored luxury experience within a boutique cruise environment, setting us apart from the mainstream providers or the mega ships, which constitute the wider market. Smaller and easier to navigate, our specialty designed ships provide a tailored experience for our customers' holiday from our nationwide chauffeur car pickup service at the start of their holiday to the number of single cabins we have catering for solo travelers, to the quality of service and hospitality onboard.

We continually look to improve and refresh our proposition across dining, trips and entertainment. You can see on the screen a picture of our newly launched French restaurant, aboard the Spirit of Discovery. Refined but contemporary, it offers a fantastic dining experience and is proving extremely popular with our guests.

We aim to do things differently catering for our distinct customer base. And in doing so, we generate strong demand for our product and loyalty to our brand. That demand is driving high load factors, more early bookings and increased per diems, the amount of customers pay per day, as our need to discount reduces. But importantly, our customers still recognize the great value for money they are getting. This is a trend we are confident will continue as we carry on giving customers what only Saga knows how to do.

River cruise holidays are perfect for our customers, sitting between our active land-based touring options and our no-fly hassle-free ocean cruise experiences, River cruising offers a gentle river-based touring option without the need for lengthy coach journeys and multiple changes in hotel. Customers wake up each day at an exciting new destination. We moved our River Cruise business under the leadership of the Ocean Cruise team earlier this year -- sorry, several years ago and have been aligning the service experience across the 2 propositions.

As you can see from the page, the results have been very successful, with load factors, per diems and customer satisfaction all performing very well. Building on this success, we're adding more ships. And this summer, launched our newest vessel, the Spirit of the Moselle. This is an outstanding contemporary ship, especially designed by us for our customers. Its sleek exteriors and modern interior design is already proving incredibly popular with our customers, demonstrating the opportunity we have to scale up our river cruise business. Our next river ship is already in development and due to launch in summer 2027 as part of our ongoing growth ambition for this part of our business.

Our cruise performance has somewhat out-shown our holidays business in recent years, but we've been making great progress there, too. And there are clear opportunities to build on this under our new leadership structure. At Saga, we offer holiday options that meet customers' needs whatever their age. We tend to find a younger, more active customer attracted to our land-based touring holidays, often as a gateway to a more relaxed river cruise in the future.

Other customers look to enjoy a hotel stay at an interesting destination through one of our specially selected hotel stays, complete with Saga host on site to make sure they get the most out of their holiday. Whatever their choice, we understand that older customers are drawn to different aspects of travel to those generally catered for by the mass market.

With more time available to them, older customers will typically choose to stay a little longer to more deeply experience the destination they are visiting. They're interested in understanding the language, enjoying local cuisine and visiting culturally significant sites. Beaches and swimming pools are nice, but our customers would typically prefer a nice meal overlooking amazing scenery without the sound of children splashing around behind them.

Our holidays offer had over time become a little too generic, missing this opportunity to fully play to the differing demands of our customers, something that our cruise businesses have been doing brilliantly. Now under the leadership of Nigel Blanks, previously CEO of our Cruise division, we are bringing the focus more squarely back on our customers and differentiated experiences tailored for them.

Recognizing the type of holidays our customers want, we are expanding our range of special interest holidays, think bird watching, food and wine, history, archeology and so on. It's early days. But as you can see, this refocus, which will take a while to fully flow through to our program, has already started to work.

Revenues and profits are continuing to grow from an already strong performance last year and satisfaction levels have materially improved. Customers tell us they love our nationwide chauffeur car service and so from April, our chauffeur service will be included in all Saga Holidays as standard, meaning that whatever their holiday choice, the Saga experience starts from the moment they leave their house.

Our insurance business is in a transitional year, as we prepare for our Ageas partnership. Nonetheless, we've made significant steps forward towards our new simplified lower-risk operating model and traded well in the meantime. Under the new leadership team we put in place earlier this year, led by Lloyd East. We've been investing in price and marketing to support long-term growth and prepare us for the Ageas partnership. And the results have been strong. Three out of our 4 policy lines are now growing after several years of decline and our customer satisfaction scores reflect the refocus on customer that Lloyd and his team are bringing.

Much credit goes to our insurance colleagues for Saga's Insurance business being ranked in the top 50 organizations for customer satisfaction by the Institute of Customer Service, only 1 of 2 insurers to be named in that group. Preparations for our Ageas partnership have continued at pace, as we work towards a significantly simplified lower risk insurance business model. We completed the sale of our underwriting business in July, meaning that Saga is no longer exposed to underwriting risk, and we will transition a large part of our broking operations to Ageas later this year as we go live with that home and motor partnership.

I'm particularly excited about how new products and services can drive future growth. In particular, we are focused on creating more ways to engage on a deeper level with our customers more frequently. Take our money business, for example, the partnership we signed with NatWest earlier this year is exciting in its own right, given that we are expanding our suite of differentiated products. But more than this, it's symbolic of how we could pursue additional innovative partnerships across different business lines in the future.

Elsewhere, we've already been deepening our customer relationships with lesser-known products within the Saga portfolio. For example, our Saga wine club, Vintage by Saga, with more than 10,000 customers regularly buying wine from us. Similarly, our Saga Connections introductions service for older people engages with 13,000 subscribers checking their connections on the website multiple times a week, significantly increasing their exposure to Saga and our wider product set.

These are great ways for us to remain front of mind with customers beyond their annual holiday or insurance renewal. While our primary focus remains on our core travel and insurance propositions, you can see the obvious crossover from those businesses to these types of additional service. So there are undoubtedly opportunities to cross-pollinate and build on areas like this that amplify our customers' engagement with Saga.

Our publishing business lies at the heart of our customer engagement strategy. Celebrating the lifestyles of older people, it provides deep and regular engagement with our target customer group and in a digital world is increasingly a powerful source of insight into what is on their minds and what attracts their interest.

As you can see from this page, comprising our award-winning magazine, newsletters, website and online articles, it's a fantastic aspirational communication channel, positively portraying the lifestyles and interests of older people. This month's magazine encapsulates that perfectly. You will have seen coverage of our interview with Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren right across the mainstream press. And in every instance, crediting Saga Magazine in the reporting.

And we have a real opportunity to build on this amazing content, given the early success we are seeing across our digital channels and platforms. Our print magazine is already the largest paid subscription magazine in the U.K. By servicing this content on our website and refreshing it regularly, we're now driving highly engaged customers into the heart of our business, where they spend more time and come back again to see what else we've got to say. They sign up for more content, allowing us to then communicate with them more broadly. We're now seeing 1.3 million monthly visits to our magazine website, 37% of which are new to Saga and these numbers are growing every month.

Building on this brilliant content, we're sending around 10 million newsletters each month, covering anything from lifestyle tips to personal finance matters and seeing opening rates of up to 49%, a clear indication of the quality and relevance of that content. By refreshing our website, both our Saga homepage and the magazine side, we are driving traffic into the Saga environment, exposing customers to individual businesses and the messaging while they browse.

You should recognize this slide from April where Mark and I laid out our medium-term targets. So I wanted to update you on our progress. We previously guided that UPBT for '25-'26 would be lower than that of '24-'25, largely due to the increase in finance costs. You will have seen from Mark's slide that as a result of our strong first half performance, we now expect UPBT to be in line with '24-'25.

Trading EBITDA is now expected to be ahead of '24-'25 demonstrating the strong trading momentum that we've seen. And with leverage falling, we now expect year-end to be below that of '24-'25. So while it's too early to update any medium-term projections, we have clearly made a strong start and are ahead of where we expected to be this year giving us even greater confidence as to the level and timing of those medium-term targets.

Finally to wrap up before we move to questions: We've made significant progress in the first 6 months of this year. We've delivered a strong financial performance, particularly in travel, and we have significantly reduced our debt. Alongside this, we've achieved some significant strategic milestones toward our more customer-focused, simplified business model going forward. That puts us in a great position as we head towards the full year.

Looking ahead, we expect to go-live with our Ageas partnership in Q4 2025, beckoning the start of a significantly less complex and lower-risk insurance model for us next year. We will continue to build on the momentum we are seeing across our travel businesses, leveraging the benefits we are now seeing from the combined operations that we've put in place.

And we'll go-live with our NatWest Box partnership at the end of this year, which will start us down the path of engaging customers in more differentiated products and services beyond our travel and insurance offerings. In short, we'll keep delivering on what we said we would do.

We'll now go to Q&A, taking questions in the room before moving online.

Tim Barrett from Deutsche Numis. I had a couple of things, please. A question on Ocean Cruise. Could you give us an idea on how we should benchmark your performance there? And specifically, GBP 437 on the forward book looks really impressive, just wondering how you would encourage us to think about next year as a whole? And then interested in what you said about the database. Could you talk about scaling that and what size it is? I guess, how the database is growing? That would be great.

Sure. So taking the ocean point first. So what we're seeing on ocean is really strong load factor growth and performance. Clearly, that's been growing year after year. We're getting to the point now where we're well into the 90%. What that translates into is a very powerful performance in per diems. The per diem growth is coming from a combination of the demand and people competing to get on to their favorite ship and their favorite cabin and their favorite holiday.

But we're also seeing that translating into earlier bookings which means we then didn't need to discount less to drive that demand. So that, together with improving the itineraries, improving the onboard experience, improving the onshore excursions, all of those things add greater value, which drives that per diem growth.

So as we now get to the point where it's pretty clear that there's only so far you can take a load factor growth, it will continue to grow a bit. But actually, the growth opportunity from here is continuing to add more value, discount less and drive that per diem growth. So very confident that now we've got the load factors in that sweet spot that per diem growth will now continue through a combination of demand management, less discounting and adding more value as the proposition improves year after year after year. So that's the way to think about per diems.

In terms of our database, we've got the largest database for older people in the country, we've got 9.7 million people on that database. It's a really powerful insight tool. We've got contact details and can communicate to 7.7 million of those customers. So you can think of it, first and foremost, in 2 aspects. The power of that database to enable us to understand older people and curate our product proposition for those customers, whether it be on holidays, insurance or anything else, that is a really powerful tool for us, made even more powerful by our publishing business, whereby we can talk to them post articles, if you want to know who might be interested in pet products, send out a newsletter with a pet article and see who opens it.

You'll then very quickly understand what resonates with those customer groups. You'll then understand who's got a dog. But we're actually getting even cleverer. With the benefit of AI now what we've been able to do is back, what's the word I'm looking for, tag all of our historic articles to get a better understanding of what type of article works for what type of customers.

So it's not just about was it an article about dogs or was it an article about cats and so on. But actually, some customers respond better to a top 10 list of X, other like an interview style article. So what we can do is both, understand more about the customers and what they're engaging with in that publishing business and then curate and tailor our articles going forward to make sense of that. All with a view of a virtuous circle us communicating with our customers and then learning more about those customers in the process.

Obviously, the other side of that is, it's a very powerful marketing tool off the back of that. So we've got the insight on the one hand, but we've got 7.7 million customers that we can communicate with about the products that we offer. So it is something that we're driving hard.

What we have done more recently, and I touched in my presentation is, we're starting to make our Saga homepage a destination for customers online, putting brilliant publishing content on there, so that customers are seeing the content somewhere in the web, in the newsletter or simply because they've come to Saga. They see the brilliant content and then they come back the next day or even later in the day to see what else we might be saying because it talks to older people in a way that other people don't.

Clearly, in surfacing, both on the homepage and then those articles, what we're able to do is flash up relevant product content alongside it to then drive those customers into our business units. So when I say we're bringing publishing to the heart of the business, it's not in an off-line way, it really is as an introduction into our business with that insight powering the products that we offer and the services we deliver alongside them.

Sahill here from Singer Capital Markets. Three questions from me, if that's okay.

On the money side of the business, I appreciate it's relatively small at the moment. But you made progress in terms of partnerships. How should we be thinking about how that's likely to play out or you're planning to play out over the next few years or so? Just help me understand, I think there was a waterfall chart. And within them, was quite a decent chunk in terms of contribution going forward, the building blocks to actually get that kind of profitability going forward. So that's on the money side of things.

Secondly, just more generically, clearly, you're doing fantastically well on the cruise business at the moment. Can you just help us understand and just give us an overview of the state of play of the cruise market at this moment in time, particularly the area that you're focusing on? And are there any competitive threats that we need to be thinking about?

And finally, just ahead of the launch of the relationship with Ageas in Q4, how is that going in terms of the lead up to that particular launch? That would be really helpful.

Sure. So if I take the money business, and thanks for raising that because I think that's a really exciting opportunity for us. But you're right to call out the bar in that building block. It's there quite deliberately because we can see the opportunity that is a medium-term opportunity. The NatWest partnership goes live later this year. We've got around 180,000 customers engaging with our money products even today.

But in the short term, it's not about driving profitability. It's about scaling up, driving engagement, talking to customers regularly for that wider Saga environment. But clearly, as we build that proposition over time, then the focus shifts from the early scaling up to then converting that into more profits and returns on that investment. So I'd encourage you to think about that as a long-term opportunity with a short-term scale up.

In terms of the cruise market, look, I think it's dangerous right the way across our holidays proposition to think about the market rather than understanding that we do something different to the market, and that's what I'd encourage you to think about. Nobody is doing what we do. We've got 2 ships, and I said it in my presentation, that are tailored uniquely for older people, and we tailor our entire proposition for that market.

When you look at the wider market, they are either in a mass market, larger scale cruising environment or they're operating outside of the ex U.K., i.e., you've got to fly cruise. Nobody is offering that, no fly boutique cruise experience to U.K. customers exclusive for people over 50 in the way that we do. So when we talk about what's the wider market? Actually, the wider market will have its own sort of ebbs and flows. What we are seeing for our customers is consistent and growing demand year after year for what we do brilliantly.

In terms of competitive threats, I think that therein lies the answer. We do something different right the way across our holidays proposition, whether it be cruise, ocean crews, river or holidays. We win by being Saga, understanding older people better than anybody else and then curating products and services in a way that nobody else actually wants to because they're catering for a mass market, and you'll see that as we move into this new phase for Saga, where we've moved away from fixing the business, which we've been focused on for the last couple of years.

This point around we do what Saga does, we understand older people better than anybody else and right the way through all of our product propositions and indeed anything new that we offer, you're going to see us, first and foremost, thinking about the customer how their needs are different and then playing that out. And therefore, when you think about that competitive advantage that brings, it's not so much about what the wider market is doing about what we can bring that is different to that wider market.

And Ageas. So just to remind you on the Ageas for those that won't be close to it, really exciting opportunity, will transform our insurance business model. So it's a home and motor partnership where Ageas will bring the operations and the insurance infrastructure scale and investment as a first-class insurer in the U.K. After their acquisition of they will be in the top 3 U.K. insurers. They do that brilliantly. What we do brilliantly is understand older people market in a way that other people can't using our database and our experience of marketing to older people and help Ageas design products and services for those older customers.

Put that together, you've got the perfect combination of Saga doing what it does brilliantly and Ageas is doing what it does brilliantly as a first-class insurer. So really exciting opportunity, but not just because of the overall opportunity to grow but also because it frees us up to focus on what we do best and allows Ageas to focus on what they do best.

So in striking this partnership, we will and are rapidly implementing a much more simple and lower risk business model, whereby we no longer take underwriting risk. We completed the sale of our underwriter in July. And by the end of the year, we'll be live with the Ageas partnership, whereby they run the policy administrations, they run the back end, they run the infrastructure and so on and they have all the regulatory complexities that come with that, we will become a customer-focused marketing driver of that business and, therefore, be able to focus on what we do well.

So as well as the growth opportunities, that simplification objective that frees us up to focus on what we do best is a really powerful aspect of that. So underwriting completed end of July, the wider partnership due to go live at the end of the year, and everything is on track.

Any other questions in the room before we move to online? Any questions online, Chantel?

Yes, a couple. Under holidays, how are the Saga and Titan brands being developed differently? And also, how is the destination mix changing under holidays?

Okay. Thank you for that question, whoever that came from. So yes, really, really important point. So we have the opportunity to win twice in holidays because we've got a brilliant Titan brand, which is an open-age holiday business, touring business, that's got great heritage in touring and then we have the wider Saga proposition that both does touring, holidays and obviously, our cruising business.

But it's really important that we recognize those are two different businesses. And therefore, what we have been developing over the last couple of years and will continue to develop is differentiation across those two propositions because actually, in the past, we've been dangerously close to offering the same or similar experiences on Titan tour as you would a Saga tour.

And going forward, we definitely want to separate the two out so that you get something different as a different type of customer for Saga as you would from Titan. So where you see Saga on the badge, you'll see all of the things that we curate for that older customer base that comes through in with the Saga customer.

And then likewise, those customers that are looking for a complementary proposition that may be slightly younger and more active will engage with the Titan brand potentially as a feeder to engaging with Saga at a later stage when they see what the wider service and product proposition we can offer under the Saga banner looks like. So great opportunity. It's a complementary product set between the two.

And in terms of destinations, look, we'll talk more about product development and proposition in the future as Nigel and the team get their feet under the desk. Our immediate focus on proposition has been to really double down on what our customers look for from a business that offers something different for older people. And that starts with special interest holidays.

So as I said in my speech, older customers go on holiday for something different. They're not typically looking to go and lie on a beach or lie by a swimming pool. They're looking for something that engages their brain, maybe participate in their hobbies and just have a great experience beyond simply the pool side.

So special interest is always something that we've offered, but we are increasing the range of special interest holidays and seeing increased demand for our special interest holidays. So we're seeing more people engaging with our special interest holidays quite a mouthful, but I'll keep saying it. And as we add in more special interest opportunities going forward or experiences going forward, then we're seeing increased demand as a result of that. So we're seeing more demand for what we've got, and we're driving more growth in that demand by adding in more.

Okay. I've got a couple more. That's from Peel Hunt, from Ivon Jones. Say ocean cruise, how are the dry dock timings managed? And were the cruises impacted by the Middle East over the summer and what was the financial impact?

Okay. Taking the latter easily. We're not impacted by the Middle East disruption. The way to think about our ocean cruise is, it's a floating hotel, and therefore, we float wherever that we want to in any given year. So Middle East is not a big part of our itinerary. And therefore, we flex that itinerary every year to make sense of what we're seeing in the demand, but also the geopolitical environment. So actually a really flexible market for us. And despite all of the disruption in recent years, you've seen that we've gone from strength to shrink without any disruption there.

In terms of dry dock timing. We had a dry dock in the first half of this year and we had the other ship, and I forget which way around it is, but the other ship had a dry dock in the second half of last year. And you'll see that just having a slight impact on the load factors in any given year. So that therefore, effectively, the dry docks are now out of the way, and I'm going to look at Nigel, this is why I bring the team here. The cycle for dry docks are every...

It's effectively every -- we do 2 docking every 5 years, a wet dock and a dry dock. Wet dock clearly ships those in water, dry dock comes fully out, so that's what we do, our statutory and compliance work.

So it's a 5-year cycle.

Was that the 2 questions? Great. Any other questions online?

One more from Ivor. Travel marketing, how are they being deployed and how is that changing?

So there's a few things on travel marketing. Firstly, by combining the two travel businesses, cruise and holidays, we get much bigger bang for our buck because we're able to optimize our marketing right the way across our travel proposition rather than focusing on cruise marketing overhead or holidays marketing over here. So that is increasing the penetration of our marketing spend right the way across the business.

The profile of marketing is slightly different this year to previous years. We focused our marketing in the current year on driving our current year bookings, and you'll see that passenger numbers in here are 13% ahead of the strong year that we had last year. What that means is as we go into the second half of this year, we'll shift our focus into marketing next year, but it does mean that the year-on-year booking profile is slightly different, which is why you're seeing that next year bookings are slightly behind where we were this time last year for the year ahead, not concerned about that.

That's simply because we've rightly focused on driving this year, driving the growth into this year, which will then mean that translates into repeat business for next year and then we drive the next year's bookings in the second half of the year. So very confident in the outlook, and that's a business that's growing very well.

Outside of the sort of coherent marketing approach right the way across travel, what we are also now doing is really driving up our holiday marketing, more tailored for our customers, again, by looking at all of what works and what doesn't work right the way across our holiday propositions, we can take learnings from one part of the business into the others.

So I would say that in our holidays business, we've probably been a little overexposed to digital marketing and a little underexposed to analog marketing. That means that if you recognize our customer base, they tend to respond more to the white male catalog marketing than they will do to digital marketing. There's room for both, but our cruise business has got brilliant experience in doing that.

The Marketing Director that was sitting across cruise is now sitting across the whole of our Travel business, bringing those learnings into the Holidays business. So we're rebalancing the spend between digital and analog, importantly. But we're also out on radio. You'll notice that insurance is now actively marketing on TV as well, that brings us a halo effect. So right the way across the board, you'll see Saga present not just in travel, but more generally, putting your head above the parapet, which I think is a real sign of where the business now is.

We're coming out, we've got a strong footing, we've got our funding in place, we've got our growth trajectory ahead of us, and we're now trading the business hard and investing in that growth, and clearly, it's working.

Any other questions online or should I say from Ivor? Good. All right. Any other questions in the room? Doesn't sound like there's any more online.

Okay. Just to wrap up then, thank you for joining today. Look, I think we've made really good progress. You can see that we're trading well, which sets us up really well for the trajectory we're on. But really importantly, that's going to be underpinned by the delivery of our strategic actions, and we're getting on with that stuff as well, which means when we talk about those medium-term targets that we set out in April, we're even more confident here today that we'll deliver on those targets, GBP 100 million profit and less than 2x leverage by January 2030.

So great fun, and we're getting it done. Thank you, everybody.