Inchcape Stock

Hello, and welcome to Inchcape's 2026 Q3 Results. We are joined today by Adrian Lewis, Group Chief Financial Officer; and Rob Gurner, Head of Investor Relations. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the call over to Adrian. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm Adrian Lewis, Group CFO at Inchcape. Today, I'll give an overview of our Q3 trading with details of our regional performance. I'll then update you on our outlook for the year, after which I will take your questions. So let's begin.

Inchcape delivered a resilient performance during the third quarter, supported by continued strong momentum in the Americas and Europe and Africa, and despite a challenging situation in Australia. Our performance reflects the benefits of our scaled and diversified business model and highlights the success of our delivery against the Accelerate+ strategy. We delivered reported revenue growth of 7% to GBP 2.5 billion, with revenue up in constant currency terms by 5%, including 1% organic revenue growth.

Our volumes increased by 3% compared to our TIV growth of 9%. Our growth was supported by our diversified OEM portfolio with particularly good growth from our Chinese OEM partners who represented around 25% of our volumes in Q3. Our performance in the third quarter reflects a continuation of many of the trends that we saw in the first half of this year.

We continue to see strong growth in the Americas and Europe and Africa. In addition, we made progress with our management action plan to support our business in Asia. However, we saw further underperformance in Australia, which I'll come on to in more detail shortly. Our organic revenue growth in the quarter was helped by the contribution and growth seen in the distribution contracts recently won, which in aggregate more than offset the impact of the Australia decline.

Looking at our regional performance, starting with the Americas. Our volumes were up 10%, lower than TIV growth of 24%, the shortfall mainly due to the disruption to supply noted in our July statements. This has had a short-term impact on our market share in certain markets. Approximately 36% of our volumes in the region were with Chinese OEMs during the period. And as a reminder, our Chinese OEM relationships in the Americas are well established, going back more than 20 years, and these relationships enable us to present customers with a broad product portfolio across a range of powertrains.

Against supportive market conditions, our performance and market position in the Americas reflects how our Accelerate+ strategy with the strategic pillars of scale and optimize supports profitable growth with a range of acquisitions and contract wins delivering a diversified brand portfolio. For the remainder of this year, as we noted in July and as evidenced in Q3, we expect our usual second half seasonal revenue and profit weighting in the region.

Next on to APAC, where our performance is mixed. Our volumes across APAC were down 37% during the quarter against TIV growth of 5%. We made progress with our management action plan to support our business in Asia. This included cost actions, closer collaboration with our OEM partners and further optimization of our contract portfolio. On that last point, we have agreed to mutually exit 15 contracts so far this year, including Deepal in Australia announced earlier this week. There is more to come on our management action plan with the full benefits of these actions expected to take time to filter through.

Australia, remains challenging. Our volumes there were down by around 50% in a dynamic, but flat market. As we flagged earlier in the year, the Australian market has evolved rapidly, and this has continued during Q3. The market has seen fuel-related disruption and a rapid shift in customer demand towards new energy vehicle products.

The growth in EV penetration this year has accelerated from 8% at the start of the year to around 24% today. Our performance has been impacted by a deterioration in the competitiveness of our key OEM partner's brand. This has exacerbated our underperformance and led to margin pressure in our Australian business.

We are taking further decisive action to address this alongside existing restructuring activity, including a comprehensive review of product range and positioning in collaboration with our OEM partner. This is an important part of being a good distributor, helping our OEMs understand what it is going to take to win in a market such as Australia. And while we are confident that our actions will improve our business in Australia over time, this process will take time, and we expect the current challenges in Australia to continue to impact our performance in that market.

On to Europe and Africa, where we delivered another strong performance. Our volumes increased 21%, including organic volume growth of 16% compared to a TIV, which grew 2%. We saw broad-based growth across our core brands in Europe with market share gains in a number of markets, and our performance also benefiting from recently won contracts, mostly with Chinese OEMs.

In fact, we have won 17 new contracts in the region over the last 4 years, of which approximately 80% have been with Chinese OEMs. On exits, we have mutually agreed with BYD that their contract with us in Belgium and Luxembourg will end at the end of this year, slightly earlier than planned. This exit and transition is being efficiently managed, and we remain on good terms with that OEM. The contract is financially immaterial, representing less than 3% of group revenue and remains margin dilutive. Our recent acquisitions in the region are also performing well in Iceland, and we have seen a good start in Bulgaria. In short, our business in Europe and Africa is delivering against our Accelerate+ strategy with strong momentum and good performance from our long-standing brand partners growth from the contracts we have won and from acquisitions.

Now on to capital allocation, where we remain disciplined, allocating capital across acquisitions and share buybacks where we see value for shareholders. This is supported by our strong cash flow dynamics and strong balance sheet. We continue to make progress with the scale part of our strategy and recently signed and completed on a number of value-enhancing bolt-on acquisitions.

During the quarter, we announced a bolt-on acquisition primarily with Volvo in 2 markets and as well as Jaguar Land Rover in 1 market in the Americas, which strengthens our product and brand portfolio across a range of customer segments. This follows our acquisition of Silver Star, the Mercedes-Benz distributor in Bulgaria, which completed at the start of the quarter. On acquisitions more broadly, we continue to see them as an important component of driving long-term shareholder value, together with the value we see in our share buyback program. And on that point, we have made further progress with the current GBP 250 million share buyback program, having repurchased approximately GBP 170 million of shares so far this year. In just over 2 years, we have repurchased approximately 18.5% of the company.

Finally, on to the outlook for the year. We expect organic volume growth to be at the top end of the 3% to 5% guidance range. We also expect strong cash generation with free cash flow to profit after tax conversion of more than 100%. These guidance metrics are unchanged. Due to the performance of our Australian business, a market which is now expected to be dilutive to group margins, we expect to deliver adjusted operating margins of circa 5.5% in FY 2026.

On our underlying effective tax rate for this year, we expect to see some one-off benefits from corporate reorganization in certain parts of the group, and we also expect currency translation tailwinds at prevailing exchange rates. So taking all of those factors together, we expect adjusted EPS growth of approximately 10% for FY '26. This is underpinned by our ongoing execution across our business with strong momentum in the Americas and Europe and Africa, together with our strong cash generation and disciplined approach to capital allocation.

And finally, I'd like to reiterate that our diversified market and OEM portfolio remains an important strength for Inchcape. This is powered by the commitment, hard work and focus of our people in each of our 40 markets. So I'd like to thank them for their ongoing dedication and support this year. We will continue to manage the business in an agile and disciplined way, working closely with our OEM partners and maintaining our focus on sustainable growth and shareholder returns. This will support our continued confidence in the medium-term ambition of delivering more than 10% EPS compound growth rate to the end of 2030. That's it from me. Let's take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt.

A couple of questions from me. First of all, you've maintained your free cash flow guidance for the group. But when we look into movements around inventory and perhaps specifically around Australia, are there any issues that we should be aware of there?

And secondly, a more general question. When you look across your portfolio, are there any product lineups where you're slightly wary where the OEM is not positioned to adapt to rapidly evolving markets and clearly referencing what we've seen in Australia and whether that could be replicated elsewhere?

Thank you, Andrew. I might take the second one first, and then I'll address your free cash flow and inventory point second. I think if you think about our Accelerate+ strategy and the work we have been doing over the last 3, 4, 5 years around expanding and diversifying the group with a broader brand portfolio and a broader set of market presence in different markets, that is all about building diversification into the group, diversification so we can adapt in market as customer choices change, as customer preferences change across powertrains and across taxation landscapes as well as driving efficiency through a scaled operation.

And we know go back to strategy, when we see greater than 10% market share, that can be really, really good for how margins show up in a particular market. That strategy is really coming to bear. You can see that happening in Europe and Africa. You can see that happening in the numbers we're printing in the Americas as well. So I think when I think about those 2 regions and I think about the performance we have seen across that portfolio, I don't sit here worrying at all about a particular OEM in isolation. They're all going to -- each OEM has its strengths, and we will play to those strengths in how we present the products in each of our market. But our strategy is all about building a diversified business.

And you can see us doing that in Europe and Africa and the work we're doing as well in Asia is going to support that over time. On free cash flow and inventory connected to matters in Australia, look, we're a demand-led organization.

Our S&OP processes, we've spoken about at length in the past around how we think about using technology and AI and really clear governance frameworks to ensure we buy the right amount of stock for demand as we see it in the market. And so please don't connect share position and some of the margin challenges that we've got with an impending inventory issue in Australia. We're working on a demand-led process with our OEM partner to buy the right amount of stock for the demand profile that we see. There's always peaks and troughs. That's part of managing the business and different supply chains, but no issue for you to think about in terms of our free cash flow, which is why we've reiterated the greater than 100% free cash flow conversion for this year.

We'll now move to our next question from Tim Ramskill from Bank of America.

Maybe 3, if that's okay. So just in terms of APAC overall as a region, so a bit of Australia as well as elsewhere. I mean, is your sense that the sort of footprint in the business as a consequence of the 15 contract exits that you talked about plus your thought process around the Aussie business, sort of maybe just some sense as to sort of where you think you might end up versus where we were a couple of years ago, taking all of those factors into account of scaling the overall revenues?

And then a couple of materially less interesting questions, but you talked about the tax rate helping to get to the 10% earnings growth. Can you just be a little bit more explicit on how you expect that to play out in terms of an effective tax rate? And then also in an environment of funding costs rising. Can you just remind us around your vehicle funding arrangements with your OEMs and the sensitivity there to prevailing interest rates, please?

Very good. Three big questions there, Tim. Thank you. So let's start with the one at the top of the order, APAC and how we think the footprint will evolve and where that business will get back to. Yes, you're absolutely right. We've had to do an awful lot of work this year. Firstly, on how we structure our businesses around the volumes we are seeing, how we are looking at our contract portfolio, and you've seen us act with discipline around those contracts where we feel like we can build a mutually acceptable and sustainable business for us and for our OEM partner.

You've seen us talk firstly in Asia and now today around how we're working in Australia with our key brand partners around that deep and close collaboration to make sure we've got the right products that set ourselves up to address the consumer trends that are evident in those markets. We've seen those trends evolve, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. They've all moved very, very quickly in different directions.

Look, in the medium term, those businesses will still remain very attractive. In the medium term, we continue to see us being able to build sustainable and attractive businesses. I don't think they'll get back to the scale that they were several years ago, particularly when you think about the participation of Chinese brands in certain markets in those areas, but certainly, we can see a margin recovery profile as we work on the product ranges that we're offering in those markets.

We know that the impact that Australia has had on margins for this year specifically, that will come back over time. The contract exits we've been clear about were dilutive to profitability. They will support an improved margin position as we look out as well as I said earlier in the conversation around the work we've been doing about adjusting our cost base to make sure we're set up to address the market that we're in.

On tax, if I can, look, this is the work that kind of often goes unseen and unnoticed as you -- post acquisition, as you look at the landscape across, particularly in Latin America, where we look at our legal entity structures and how they are best optimized. We're doing some really, really good work, and thank you to the team in that part of the world leading it, where we're bringing legal entities together that have come together through acquisition into a more simplified corporate structure.

And sometimes that unlocks tax benefits that have been otherwise inaccessible to us. So that's what it will support this year's EPS position by a low single-digit percentage year-on-year. And then in terms of working capital, the consequence of higher levels of interest rates and how our vehicle funding arrangements work, absolutely. Look, we work with -- in 3-way agreements typically with OEMs to make sure we can run a really efficient working capital cycle across the group, firstly, managing inventory to the right level of supply, but also seeing those funding arrangements.

They typically are pegged to variable cost or to variable rates and typically variable rates in the major currencies of the world, EUR, USD, CNY, JPY. So they will be the indexes and we always think about those as an input cost as we think about our margin structures and how we set up our products as they go into the market. So an overall rising interest rate environment, naturally, that has to be thought about as part of the overall value proposition.

But I would add the work we've been doing about driving a really efficient working capital structure in the group lessens the need for those inventory financing structures because if you hold a lower level of cover, you need lower levels of inventory financing. And those 2 are clearly linked. I hope that covers your questions, Tim.

Just really quickly, maybe just on Aussie because you talked in the statement about -- said in your prepared remarks about it's going to continue to be challenging. Just some sense as to how you think this plays out into 2027. Do you think you can get to a better position by the second half, but it will be a challenging first half? Just interested in it.

Sorry, Tim, I didn't catch the early part of that question. Is that in relation to?

With regards to Australia.

Specific to Australia.

You talked about it continuing to be...

Sorry, I missed the part...

Actually, the shape of it.

Yes. Okay. Look, it's too early for us to guide specifically on the shape of 2027. I think what we would say is, look, we're going to -- we're talking in the statements about a comprehensive review with our OEM partner led at very senior levels in the organization.

Duncan and I and other members of the group executive team were in Japan earlier this quarter. We'll be back there during the course of this year. And we've kicked off a very, very senior level led conversation around how we set that brand up in Australia to address the market as it has shifted and set it up as a business that is acceptable to both parties. That will take time because it will undoubtedly involve deep changes to how the products are set up, how they are configured, what powertrains we bring into the market and how we position those products. They will take time to come through. Hence, our position around, look, this is unlikely to be a sharp bounce back in the near term.

We will now take our next question from Abi Bell from UBS.

Just 2 for me. First, on the momentum in Americas, which has still been very strong. It does sound like some of these volumes were perhaps held back or delayed in Q3. So how should we think about that reaccelerating in Q4 and beyond?

And secondly, sorry if I misheard this in your prepared remarks, but with the BYD contract finishing this year, can you help us understand any financial impact that we'll see as we look out to 2027? Because as I understand correctly, the contract has been performing quite well from a volume perspective.

Thank you, Abi. So look, let's talk about the Americas to start off with. Look, what a great performance that team has done there, 10% volume growth, supportive market conditions, particularly in Colombia and Peru, which continue to run from a market perspective ahead of our expectations. Reflecting on what I said in Tim's comments around efficiency, around our working capital cycles, we run a really tight ship around how we are a demand-led organization.

And sometimes when markets run ahead of expectations, inventory levels can fall as well as in these moments, sometimes you get some logistics disruption. And when you're running lower levels of inventory, sometimes that can show up in differences in terms of market share. And that's what you've seen in the Americas. You've seen it in Chile, you've seen it in Colombia and you've seen it in Peru.

That inventory started to unlock and those logistics constraints started to unlock at the back end of the third quarter, and we saw inventory levels rise in the right way, and we should -- that should support an improved market share and relative performance in what we continue to expect to be helpful conditions as we look into the fourth quarter. I would just add from a Chile perspective, that market continues to be a low single-digit growth environment and continue to run at historically low levels. In terms of BYD, yes, you're absolutely right. We did -- we -- I noted in my remarks, that contract, we have agreed to exit at the end of this year. You'll remember, contractually, we had an agreement until the third quarter of 2027.

We've been working very closely with that OEM partner. We feel very good about the way we are exiting and transitioning in a very orderly way. From a quantification perspective, we've updated our notes today to say it was less than 3% of group revenues and dilutive to margins. And as I said earlier, we leave -- we exit that contract having built a good business and on very good terms with our OEM partner.

We will now take our next question from David Brockton from Deutsche Numis.

Most have been taken, but a couple of financial ones. Firstly, in terms of the additional costs and sort of turnaround in Australia, can you give us an update on exceptional costs, how you expect those to evolve through this year and next year?

Secondly, in terms of the tax rate, I think you said it was a low single-digit percentage impact on the EPS growth rate this year. Can you confirm that it's one-off and we should expect the tax rate to be back around 31% next year?

And just finally, just to pick up on that BYD, 3% of group volumes, I think you said. That feels like quite a big headwind to the growth rate potential for the business on an organic basis next year. Are you still confident you can grow organically next year?

Thank you, David. Let's start with adjusting items. And you'll remember at the start of this year, we talked about adjusting items being largely noncash related. We continue to see that picture evolve. There will be further adjusting items, mostly of a noncash nature. And you'll remember as well, we talked about those contract exits as being able to unlock some working capital benefits because of the nature of the inventory that would have been tied up in those particular contracts.

So there will continue to be some adjusting items in the second half as we continue on our restructuring programs, predominantly of a noncash nature. From a tax perspective, you're absolutely right. Our medium-term guidance is around 31%. We continue to look for opportunities across our legal entity structure and that we continue to see opportunities.

The specific items that are going to support, as you said, a low single-digit contribution to EPS growth rate this year are unlike -- will not recur, but we continue to look for opportunities to optimize tax as we look forward. On BYD, less than 3% of group revenues, indeed, that is what we said. As we look across our portfolio and we look at the opportunity that we have in the Americas, the momentum we have in the Americas, I would point you back to our medium-term guidance framework of 3% to 5% organic volume growth. We are 7% year-to-date.

We continue to see momentum in those markets. As I mentioned earlier, one of our biggest and biggest markets in the group, Chile with a very broad OEM portfolio continues to run at the low end of its historical norms. So there's every opportunity for us to continue to see growth within that 3% to 5% guidance range. We'll say more specifically about 2027 in our FY '26 statements at the end of February.

And we'll now take our next question from Arthur Truslove from Citi.

Arthur from Citi. I guess the first question I had was just can you give us an idea of how much revenue and EBIT is left in Australia? I mean, I guess volumes are down sort of 30% year-to-date on Subaru, and the revenue was $1 billion last year. So I mean, -- could it be something like GBP 700 million of revenue and GBP 30 million of EBIT for this year, but just sort of wondering how you think about what is left?

And secondly, I appreciate the message is clear that the margin guide cut is all Australia. Can you sort of talk about how things are going elsewhere in Asia in respect of competitiveness? So obviously, Hong Kong, Singapore, big markets, you have lost share, but can you talk about how the fight back there is going? And also, can you sort of give us an idea of what the kind of margin trajectory in Australia was when things were going better just to sort of give us an idea of sort of how much has been lost?

Three questions. I might combine the first 2, if I may, and then I'll come on to the Asia comments. Australia, as you well know, was one of our top 3 markets. It was previously in our disclosures in our full year and half year statement. So you have a sense of the revenue as it contributed in previous years. You can draw a direct correlation between our volume performance and that revenue to quantify the step down in revenue. And the words we've used today are our Australian business was an accretive business to the group. It is now a dilutive business to the group. So it remains profitable. We don't talk about specific market brand profitability that's commercially sensitive.

But unequivocally, its current position as a dilutive business to the group at scale continues to be a position we need to improve because it is not acceptable for it to continue at that level, and that's the work we are currently engaged in with our key brand partner to make sure that business gets back to something that is at least in line with the group over time.

And when I think about Hong Kong and Singapore, and I think about more broadly the work the team have been doing around our turnaround plans and the work in Asia, that covered really 3 big areas. Firstly, our own cost structures, which will be supportive to margins.

Working closely with our OEMs to make sure we've got a product set that addresses what has been a rapidly changing customer environment and competitive environment. And then finally, the contracts that we've talked about as being dilutive to profitability as the markets have shifted.

All of that work continues to make good progress. We continue to see, as we look forward into 2027, the benefits from taking those dilutive to profitability contracts out of the business. The cost work will show up better in the second half. The products take a bit more time to get through, as I alluded to in some of my Australian comments, it takes time to reengineer products, get products of a different specification and a different price point into markets. So I think there's more to come on that.

You've seen a better share position, particularly in Hong Kong during the third quarter in what has been a very noisy market because of regulatory change. But more work to do in Singapore, places like Brunei, Guam, they continue to perform very, very well with our brand portfolio. And indeed, we've expanded our brand portfolio in one of those markets during the quarter as well.

And just to follow up then. I mean, I guess going back to Australia again, I mean, is there a scenario in which it could have a prolonged period of making losses? Or is that difficult to believe because ultimately, you would take cost measures to sort that out? Yes, just wondered about that as well.

Arthur, same position as we would do with every contract. Every contract has to stand up on its own 2 feet and Australia is no different. We will address our cost base in line with the market share aspirations that we see given the product range that is available from our OEM partner and from the other OEMs because don't forget we work with a couple of OEMs in Australia.

And our business with Foton is doing very well, and we're seeing demand grow, and we're able to grow that business in a very, very positive way. We would address our cost base. We would adjust how we operate to make sure we deliver for our stakeholders, and we'll work with our OEM partners to make sure we do that.

And we will now take our next question from Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas.

Just one for me. Just thinking about price versus volume through the second half of the year, there was quite a big -- quite a big range in the first half. Should we assume that it's pretty similar in the second half, i.e., Asia Pac prices at high single digits and EMEA and Americas pricing down mid-single digit? And where does that get?

Andy, look, I think, yes, you can see it in the delta between our revenue growth on an organic basis and our volume growth. We've seen a small price mix headwind with organic revenue growth of 1% and volume growth of 3%. So a shift as our Americas business and our Europe and Africa business growing participation in the group at what are slightly lower average selling prices.

I wouldn't read into this as a significant change in product mix in any of those regions -- with a very diversified brand portfolio, consistent with our strategy. We're continuing to see those businesses perform on all fronts. So mainly that price mix effect, I would articulate as being related to regional mix and the relative differences in the average selling price in those markets.

It appears there are currently no questions over the phone and neither over the webcast. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Adrian for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. So to summarize, Inchcape delivered a resilient performance in Q3, supported by strong momentum in the Americas and in Europe and Africa. We're taking further decisive action to address the underperformance in Australia. And despite resulting lower group operating margin this year, we expect to deliver adjusted EPS of approximately 10%.

To close, I wanted to remind you that we'll be holding an In The Driving Seat webinar at 2:00 p.m. U.K. time on Thursday, the 19th of November, to discuss key elements of our growth profile, including distribution contract wins, acquisitions and value-added services. That's all from us. Please get in touch with Rob, if you'd like to follow up and discuss anything from today.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Duncan Tait, Group CEO, and I'm joined by our Group CFO, Adrian Lewis. Here's today's agenda. I'll give an overview and market context. Adrian will then run through our results and outlook for the full year, and I'll give an update on our strategic progress and sum up. Today's presentation is available on our website, and a recording of today's session will be available later today. After the presentation, we'll take your questions.

So let's begin. Inchcape continued to deliver on our Accelerate+ strategy during the first half amid an evolving market backdrop, supported by our diversified and scaled market and brand portfolio. Our growth was driven by distribution contracts won in recent years and last year's bolt-on acquisition in Iceland. We remain disciplined on capital allocation. We completed the acquisition of Silver Star in Bulgaria on 1st July, underlining our ongoing focus on value-accretive M&A. And we made progress with our GBP 175 million share buyback program launched in March, which we have today increased by GBP 75 million to GBP 250 million. And this highlights our highly cash-generative business. Looking ahead, we expect to continue to deliver in line with our medium-term guidance of greater than 10% EPS growth.

This slide shows the key developments in our industry and how Inchcape is addressing these trends through our agile approach across our scaled and diversified business. Firstly, our industry is evolving at pace with the rise of Chinese OEMs and an acceleration of the adoption of their products around the world. These OEMs, many of whom Inchcape has close relations with, are challenging the industry status quo. Traditional players are now looking for new ways to enhance competitiveness, including collaborating with them in areas like manufacturing, technology and product development. This cross-industry collaboration will remain a key theme in the coming years. In addition, we will continue to focus our investments, efforts and resources on our OEM partners, who we believe will be the industry winners and fit with our business model.

Our strategy is based on providing the best delivery for our OEM partners by collaborating with them to drive customer satisfaction. This is particularly relevant for the second trend on this slide, the transition to New Energy Vehicles or NEVs. While this is a long-term story supported by infrastructure, government incentives and consumer appetite, we see a 2-speed world. Many of our markets are well behind the EV curve, while in others like Hong Kong and Singapore, EV penetration is well over 50%. And with that in mind, we continue to prepare for the NEV transition by upgrading our network and ensuring our people are ready for the changes to come in areas like training and health and safety initiatives.

Our role is to support our OEM partners with the optimal product mix, pricing and positioning in a market in line with the local pace of transition to New Energy Vehicles. So ultimately, the NEV transition is another opportunity for Inchcape to deliver value for our partners.

Finally, on this slide and partly driven by the other 2 trends here, manufacturers are increasingly focused on efficiencies across their cost base and supply chain to drive margins and protect cash flows. We are following suit through continued cost discipline across the business and an ongoing focus on value-added services, in particular, finance and insurance, servicing and parts. This approach will help us to deliver against our medium-term target of 6% operating margins and 100% free cash flow conversion. Our industry is evolving at pace, and Inchcape will continue to be at the cutting edge of these developments by remaining agile to consistently deliver for our OEM partners and shareholders.

Turning from the industry to the market on this slide. I've set out some of the market context for our first half results. Overall, market volumes across our markets grew by 8% and Inchcape outperformed the market, growing volumes by 9%. The key overall trends across our regions are the rapid growth of Chinese OEMs and the continued adoption of New Energy Vehicles. Of course, these trends are connected given Chinese OEMs' specific focus on NEVs. It is worth noting that 25% of our volumes are now with Chinese OEMs, excluding BYD and BeLux. And during the first half, our Chinese OEM volumes increased by around 40%.

Moving West to East and starting in the Americas, TIV on market volumes was up 21%. Our volumes were slightly lower at 18% due to our market share weightings in certain markets like Colombia, which grew substantially, where our market share is around 10% compared to 25% in Chile. We grew market share in other markets, including Chile, which saw solid market growth. Our Americas market saw a 48% increase in Chinese OEM volumes over the last 12 months. We are benefiting from this trend as a result of our long-standing relationships with the likes of Changan and Great Wall Motors. Finally, in the region, there was some short-term disruption to vehicle supply as a result of shipping delays related to the Middle East situation.

In Europe and Africa, TIV was up 4%, and we outperformed significantly, growing our volumes by 13%, including our Iceland acquisition and 9% excluding that deal. Europe is seeing moderate EV adoption, but Chinese OEMs have grown share from 7% to 10% over the last year. We are benefiting from their entry into the market, particularly on the top line, having won multiple contracts with the likes of XPENG, BYD, Changan and GAC AION in recent years.

Southern and Eastern European markets continue to be resilient, while Africa remains robust. In APAC, TIV grew by 4%, while our volumes were down 16%. TIV growth in Asia was higher at 7%, with Australia remaining at lower levels of growth. NEV adoption in the region continued to accelerate with Chinese OEMs rapidly gaining market share. The region remains highly competitive in most markets, particularly in Australia, as I mentioned in March. NEV penetration there has grown from 20% last year to 35% at the current time, and EV penetration has grown from around 8% in January this year to around 23% in June.

In many of our APAC markets, we are underweight with Chinese OEMs, but we do have a number of relatively new relationships with the likes of Foton, which we continue to develop. I'll come back to our management action plan for APAC later. As always, we continue to support our long-standing OEMs with their product lineups, pricing and positioning to ensure we have the optimal mix in each of our markets.

Here, I've outlined why Inchcape remains the independent distributor of choice for our OEM partners across our scaled and diversified footprint. We manage the cost of complexity for our partners across the value chain with our local expertise supported by our global capabilities. Our AI-driven sales and operational planning processes remain our key differentiator to drive market share gains for our OEMs. Our long track record of performance is evidence of our leading market position. And looking ahead, you can track our future performance against a clear set of medium-term targets published last year. In summary, against an evolving market backdrop, Inchcape will continue to be a global winner in the automotive industry.

That's it for me. I'll now hand over to Adrian.

Thank you, Duncan, and good morning, everyone. I will take you through our results for the first half of 2026 and our outlook for the full year. We generated revenues of GBP 4.7 billion with reported revenue growth of 9%, up 7% in constant currency, which includes organic revenue growth of 5%. Our top line performance was primarily driven by supportive market conditions and the contribution from distribution contracts won in recent years. Adjusted operating margins were down 40 basis points to 5.3%, driven by margin contraction in APAC, but partly offset by margin expansion in the Americas and Europe and Africa. While operating profit was flat year-on-year at GBP 248 million, adjusted PBT was GBP 188 million, down 10% in constant currency due to higher net finance costs. As a result and with a slightly higher effective tax rate in the half, offset by the impact of share buybacks, adjusted EPS was flat at 35.5p.

Free cash flow to profit after tax conversion was higher at 65% with free cash flow of GBP 84 million generated and our balance sheet remains in good shape with closing leverage of 0.5x EBITDA, slightly higher than the full year '25 close, but down from the 0.6x in June '25 and well within our self-mandated ceiling of 1x. In summary, at a group level, we saw progress in the first half of 2026, driven by the Americas, Europe and Africa, mostly offsetting a challenging Australia.

Here is the revenue bridge with the building blocks of our 9% revenue growth. We grew 5% organically with a further 2% related to our Iceland acquisition. In addition, we benefited from translational currency tailwinds of 2%. And at prevailing rates, we expect broadly similar currency tailwinds for the second half. Volumes grew by 9% on an organic basis as well, excluding our acquisitions and disposals last year, and we saw a small change in the average selling price due to the mix of regions and brands.

As I mentioned earlier, operating profit was flat. And one of the benefits of our diversified geographic profile is that lower operating profit in APAC has been offset by the operating profit growth in the Americas and Europe and Africa, together with around GBP 6 million of translational effects. Operating margins declined by 40 basis points on a reported basis to 5.3% with margin expansion in 2 regions offset by margin reduction in APAC, principally Australia, which I'll cover in more detail shortly as part of my regional review, starting with the Americas on the next slide.

In the Americas region, we saw continued positive momentum as conditions were overall helpful and especially so in Colombia and Peru, where we saw strong market tailwinds supporting our growth and good performance in Chile, where market growth was in the mid-single-digit territory. In the region, market volumes were up 21% and our volumes were up 18% and organic revenue growth was 13%. The variance between our volume growth and the organic revenue growth was due to a price mix across our product ranges. This highlights the benefits of our scaled and diversified brand portfolio across a broad range of leading European, Japanese and Chinese OEMs, the latter of which now represents over 40% of our new vehicle volumes in the region and demonstrates the benefits of acquisitions and investments made in recent years, in particular, Derco.

Operating margins were up 50 basis points to 6.5%, reflecting resilient gross margins, operating leverage from higher volumes amid cost disciplines. It is also notable that there was some late disruption to vehicle supply across the industry in the region during the period as a result of shipping situation related to the Middle East. And for the full year, we expect the environment in key markets to remain supportive, driving further momentum and profitable growth with the usual seasonal weighting towards the second half.

In APAC, market volumes were up 4%, while our volumes were down 16% and our organic revenue declined 7%, reflecting some mix into higher-priced markets, especially in Singapore and in Hong Kong. There was a stabilizing of our position in Asia, supported by the impact of management actions.

Australia performance was weak and below our expectations at the start of the year. This was down to a unique set of factors at play during the period, directly connected to the Middle East situation. There has been significant fuel disruption both on price and availability, which drove a rapid shift in consumer purchasing trends towards lower-priced and new energy vehicles, and as Duncan mentioned earlier, with NEV rapidly expanding to 35% of total sales. Our key brand partners' performance was further impacted by supply constraints affecting our product mix and competitiveness, leading to our operational underperformance.

It's worth noting that our Chinese brands in Australia, Foton and Deepal continued to ramp up during the period. And as a result of lower revenues and gross margin compression, particularly in Australia, adjusted operating margins contracted by 290 basis points to 3.5%. We made good progress on management actions in the regions, including cost reduction plans and enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners. Duncan will discuss these management actions in more detail later on.

Across APAC, we are exiting 13 immaterial distribution contracts, which contribute revenue of around GBP 140 million on an annualized basis, and these contracts are dilutive to profitability. For the full year, we expect that management actions with further contract exits and a reduced cost base will positively impact half 2 margins and free cash flow and will enhance our product range across the region. Asian markets will continue to stabilize, but we expect ongoing competitiveness in key markets. Australia is expected to remain weak, but our second half performance will be supported by the impact of management actions, improved product availability and mix from our key OEM partner.

On to Europe and Africa, where we again delivered underlying market outperformance supported by the growth from contracts won in recent years and the Iceland acquisition. Market volumes were up 4%, and we outperformed with organic revenue growth of 7%. Our Icelandic acquisition contributed a further 7% to the top line growth in total, and our volumes grew by 13%. Our growth was broad-based across the region with another strong performance in our Southern European markets.

Adjusted operating margins were up 20 basis points to 5.1% with gross margin resilience and scale offsetting the dilution from early-stage contracts and some minor supply disruption in Africa related to the Middle East situation. For the full year, we anticipate continued operational execution and momentum with further growth from contract wins and the impact of Silver Star acquisition in Bulgaria in Half 2, which completed on the 1st of July. This is expected to offset the region's typical Half 1 weighted seasonality.

On to our income statement, where I wanted to touch on some of the key items. Net finance costs increased by GBP 14 million, driven by higher interest rates, increased levels of inventory financing and the impact of currency timing in the prior year. There are adjusting items of GBP 64 million, GBP 62 million of which relates to the significant restructuring underway across the business. Included in this is GBP 28 million in relation to the derecognition of some of the value of the distribution contracts we are exiting in APAC. There was also GBP 22 million related to site exits and headcount reduction, particularly in APAC and a further GBP 12 million in inventory write-downs. Of these restructuring costs, we expect around GBP 18 million to be cash items, of which GBP 13 million has already been spent.

On to tax, our underlying tax rate increased to 31.4%, slightly above our guidance range of 30% to 31%, driven by geographic mix. Adjusted EPS was unchanged at 35.5p, reflecting lower profits and a higher tax rate offset by the benefits of share buybacks.

And this slide shows our net debt bridge over the last 12 months, which highlights our strong balance sheet supported by consistently strong free cash flow generation and underlines the Half 2 weighting of our cash flows. As I said earlier, cash conversion in the half was 65%, but looking back at the last 12 months to the end of June 2026, it's been 112%. On an LTM basis, we generated GBP 327 million in free cash flow and maintained our disciplined approach to capital allocation. Share buybacks amounted to GBP 167 million. Dividend payments were GBP 116 million, and we invested GBP 38 million in acquisitions, mainly the Iceland [indiscernible] transaction. And after a GBP 39 million impact from FX and other items, the net of these elements saw leverage fall slightly to 0.5x net debt to EBITDA from 0.6 from the prior year, which brings me to our disciplined capital allocation approach.

We will continue to pay dividends at 40% of basic EPS with the interim dividend representing 1/3 of the previous year's total dividend. So this means an interim dividend of 10.8p, up 14% from the prior year. We will continue to act with discipline to balance capital allocation between value accretion from share buybacks and bolt-on acquisitions with leverage below 1x EBITDA. We are 40% of the way through our current GBP 175 million share buyback program, and we are today increasing the program by GBP 75 million to GBP 250 million. This top-up highlights our disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation. We expect the program to be completed by the end of February 2027. And on M&A, we integrated our Iceland acquisition and completed the Bulgaria deal earlier this month, and we will continue to focus on value-accretive M&A to support future growth. To sum up this slide, our capital allocation policy remains focused on shareholder value.

Turning now to the outlook for 2026. We expect to deliver a year of strong EPS growth in line with our medium-term guidance of greater than 10% EPS growth through to the end of 2030. For this year, this will be driven by organic volume growth at the top end of our 3% to 5% guidance range, and we expect to deliver operating margins for the year of circa 6%, supported by scale and cost discipline. Given our strong free cash flow performance in the first half and our expectations for the rest of the year, we are now targeting free cash flow conversion of over 100%. Our performance this year will continue to be supported by our disciplined approach to capital allocation with an increased share buyback program and the contribution of our recent value-accretive acquisitions in Bulgaria and Iceland.

This slide shows the regional drivers of our outlook this year and highlights the benefits of our diversified geographic portfolio. We expect a stable performance at constant currency with positive momentum in the Americas, Europe and Africa and a stabilizing Asia, offsetting a weak Australia. Growth in 2026 will include translational currency tailwinds at prevailing exchange rate and the contribution from the Silver Star acquisition.

As we have mentioned previously, we continue to expect that our performance in full year 2026 will be Half 2 weighted. We expect to deliver an uplift in new vehicle volumes of around 20,000 vehicles in Half 2 from the 180,000 vehicles we distributed in the first half. And this is very similar to the volume uplift from Half 1 to Half 2 that we achieved last year. This year, the uplift will be supported by the usual Half 2 weighted seasonality in the Americas.

In APAC, our Half 2 volumes and margins will be supported by improved product availability and mix with margin benefits coming through from the actions we are taking in that region. We expect a stable Half 2 performance in Europe and Africa compared to the first half with the region's typical first half weighting seasonality offset by the contribution of the Silver Star acquisition in Half 2.

So that's it from me. I'll hand back now to Duncan.

Thanks, Adrian. Here is a reminder of Accelerate+, our strategic framework that has enabled our performance as we continue to scale and optimize our business. And we will continue to deliver against our medium-term ambitions, supported by our strategic enablers outlined here. We continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy in the first half. Our objective is to develop our OEM portfolio and geographic footprint, thereby enhancing the resilience in our earnings profile.

Starting with scale. So far this year, we have won 5 new distribution contracts with Volvo in Ecuador, Deepal in Barbados, Subaru and XPENG in Brunei and GAC AION in Romania. The Silver Star acquisition in Bulgaria strengthens our market position and expands our brand portfolio in that market with Mercedes-Benz, Daimler Trucks and Buses. Our acquisition in Iceland continues to perform well.

We continue to optimize our business in a number of ways to drive operational execution. We are focused on commercial discipline, and let me give you 3 examples of this in the first half. Firstly, we significantly rationalized our brand portfolio in APAC with 13 contract exits as well as 2 exits in the Americas, all agreed with our OEM partners. Our clear and decisive portfolio management enables us to focus on our priority brands and markets and will support our future financial performance. Portfolio management has been part of the Inchcape story for a while as we continue to filter out those contracts that we do not think will provide the requisite value for us or our OEM partners. We also enable our teams to prioritize and focus on the high-value and high potential contracts. The 15 contracts exited in H1 are immaterial to the group. Last year, in aggregate, they represented around 5,000 new vehicles, equivalent to approximately 1.5% of the group's total volumes.

Secondly, we further leveraged our third-party retail network, enabling broader in-market coverage in a capital-efficient way by exiting or selling our own retail sites across our regions.

Thirdly, we continue to drive the penetration of value-added services, in particular, growing our distribution of relatively high-margin OEM-certified parts as well as developing and delivering finance and insurance products by utilizing our global scale and partnerships. We also optimized our business by further collaborating with our OEM partners on product and inventory management, supported by our consistent execution and technology-based sales and operational planning processes. We have also taken decisive action on our cost base, driving efficiencies and tackling challenges in certain markets. This included a management action plan in APAC, which I'll now discuss.

Our actions in APAC were initiated last year to address the challenges we are facing in the region. Some of these challenges relate to the increasingly competitive environment and some are a result of our operational underperformance in certain markets. We have made excellent progress with these actions to date, and we are building momentum in restructuring our business in the region as we rebuild a platform for future growth. Our plan is focused on 2 areas: operational execution and enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners.

I want to thank Phil Jenkins, our Interim APAC CEO and his executive team in driving our actions in both of these areas and in helping position our APAC business for its next phase of development. With Phil returning to his role as our Chief M&A Officer, last week, we announced the appointment of Ian Burton as our new APAC CEO. Ian, who officially starts with us next week, is a highly experienced international business leader with more than 3 decades of leadership experience across APAC, Europe and Africa. I'm looking forward to working with Ian in developing our APAC business.

We also made a number of new management appointments across the region in H1, both at the regional headquarters and in a number of key markets. In addition, we are significantly reducing our headcount and assessing a number of noncore businesses for disposal, including the exit of some of our retail operations. These actions will help us become a leaner and more agile organization, a business that is better equipped to drive enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners.

To that end, a key focus for our APAC team this year has been the orderly exit of 13 distribution contracts to help drive efficiencies, profits and cash flows. These contracts, all agreed with our OEMs, are immaterial and dilutive to profitability. They include Stellantis brands in Australia and the Philippines, LDV and KGM in New Zealand and ORA in Hong Kong. In addition, our JLR business in Thailand has been classified as an asset held for sale in our accounts today. We expect more contract exits to come in the second half and into the future, including some of our more recently won contracts.

We are also collaborating with our OEM partners on a refreshed approach to product mix across the region. We are working with our partners on the launch and repricing of models, ensuring we enhance competitiveness and agility in a fast-evolving market environment.

To sum up, we have made excellent progress in our management action plan for APAC, and there's more to come. I expect continued challenges in the region in the short term, but I remain very confident about our long-term prospects. We have long-standing OEM relationships with the likes of Toyota and Lexus, supplemented by new partnerships in the region, including Foton in Australia and Mercedes-Benz in Indonesia and the Philippines.

With that in mind, our management action plan, supported by the strength and increasing diversity of our OEM partnerships, is building a strong platform for future growth. Just to sum up today, we made good progress in the first half of the year amid an evolving market backdrop. We continue to deliver against our strategy, exercising further discipline in our approach to capital allocation. Looking ahead, we expect to continue to deliver strong EPS growth this year and beyond, in line with our medium-term guidance.

Finally, here's a reminder of our medium-term targets, which we are reiterating today. To the end of 2030, we expect to generate $2.5 billion in free cash flow. We will deploy this free cash flow to drive shareholder value with a consistent dividend policy and more than 10% compound annual growth of EPS.

That's it for the presentation. So let's take your questions, starting with questions over the line and then from the webcast via our Head of IR, Rob.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from James Wheatcroft of Jefferies.

Two areas I really wanted to explore, really just looking into the outlook a bit more. I mean, firstly, just digging into Australia a little bit better to understand the issues there and the actions being taken to improve going forward, especially in the second half. And then sort of related, just thinking about that 2H weighting, I know it's something we saw last year. Is there any sort of additional color you can add to build out the background for that second half ramp-up, please?

So look, I'll take the first question around Australia and then hand to Adrian for how we build into H2. Look, in Australia, we had a confluence of issues in the first half. The first one we flagged at full year that we still have supply issues from our main OEM in Australia. They'll come through a bit better in the second half. The second thing was around the Iran crisis. And frankly, that has changed consumer behavior in Australia, particularly related to what happened to fuel. Fuel prices rocketed.

And the second thing, fuel availability was also limited throughout Australia. Hundreds of fuel gasoline stations had at least one fuel type out, and that has certainly changed consumer behavior. And if I give you an example, in January, EV penetration in the Australian market was just over 8%. In June, it was nearly 25%. And the portfolio of vehicles we landed was out of whack, frankly, with where the market was, we expect that to get better in the second half. And those issues caused an underperformance for us on the top line and the bottom line in Australia.

Adrian, I'll hand to you for...

Duncan, and thanks for the question, James. If I think about the Half 1, Half 2 building blocks, very similar to last year, we spoke about that 20,000 additional units. We've got the same -- broadly the same story for this year. We've got 180,000 units in Half 1. We're anticipating around 200,000 units in Half 2. A big component of that is the Americas seasonality. You saw it on the Americas slide, that Half 1, half 2 split. We're anticipating a similar story for this year in terms of a natural second half seasonality.

And then as Duncan has been -- was articulating, all of the work that have been -- we've been doing in APAC broadly across the region, both in terms of cost, in terms of contract exits, but also that [ Australasia ] story of slightly higher market share, but also a better mix of vehicles supporting an improved margin profile is the other material building block of the second half. And then, of course, in Europe and Africa, normally, that's a Half 1 weighted story. This year, we expect to see performance more a flatter picture across Half 1, Half 2 with the acquisition of Silver Star, that Bulgarian Mercedes business that we acquired that completed on the 1st of July. So we've got that benefit, which will support a stronger second half in Europe and Africa.

James, hopefully, that gives you the building blocks of how to build into second half guidance and second half weighting.

We will now take our next question from Abi Bell of UBS.

Just 2 for me. Firstly, thank you for the color on Australia. Could you give some more detail on APAC ex Australia, in particular, how should we think about underlying demand in Hong Kong and Singapore, given you flagged the pull forward in Hong Kong early in the year? And therefore, what should we expect for volume trends and profitability in the second half?

And then secondly, on the contract exits, this seems a bigger step-up than prior portfolio actions. Could you talk through the rationale for these exits and particularly why now? And as you have flagged further exits in H2, should we expect these to be in similar brands or markets or something else entirely?

Very good. Thank you, Abi. Adrian, do you want to cover the first point, and I'll talk about contract exits?

Sure. Abi, across the broader picture in Asia, we've seen a stabilizing effect. Our businesses in Indonesia and in the Philippines have improved in terms of their momentum. The market hasn't really changed in terms of that premium segment that you see in the market tracker. Indonesia has seen some growth, but the premium segment remains depressed. But the teams that have been working in that region have been doing a super job in terms of the cost base to bring a stabilization to our performance in that area as well as in Singapore.

In Hong Kong, you're absolutely right. Some regulatory change pulled forward the market, and you can see very, very strong market growth. We'd anticipate that being a Half 1, Half 2 split, and we would expect a substantially lower Hong Kong in the second half, albeit I don't think that will materially impact underlying performance across Asia and those building blocks that I've articulated why second half weighting in that region still stand despite Hong Kong being a slightly stronger in the first half.

Duncan, over to you.

Thank you very much, Adrian. So, Abi, on contract exits. So you're right, 15 exits in the first half, 13 of those related to our plan, our management plan for Asia Pacific. And look, essentially, what you see Inchcape doing, and we've been more bold about this over recent quarters, is real bold portfolio management to make sure that we are delivering for our OEM partners and for our shareholders in each of those contracts.

If I talk briefly about the performance, we are seeing great performance from our new contracts. You can see that coming through in the Americas. You can see it coming through in Europe. But we look at each of these contracts about can we deliver for our OEM, can we deliver for our shareholders, and that's led us to conclude that some of those contracts we have, particularly in Asia Pacific, we have a market misalignment with some of those OEMs, and it's right that we take bold action on them.

Now being Inchcape, of course, we're going to collaborate greatly with our OEM partners to make sure those exits are smooth. We have to look after customers in that transition as well as our OEM interests, but we are being bold, and we'll continue to look at our portfolio right across our business. And you should expect this to be an ongoing discipline with Inchcape. Let's not forget, by the way, we've also won another 5 contracts in the first half, all of which we believe will deliver for us like XPENG, which is an EV brand into Brunei, for instance, and our other contract wins like GAC AION in Europe, which is an EV brand we'll take into Romania.

We will now take our next question from James Bayliss of Berenberg.

Just one from me, please, on aftersales. I see the gross profit there is up 5% constant currency year-on-year despite issues in Africa. Can you give us a bit of color on what's driving that? Is that to do with the mix benefit from where you've exited dilutive contracts and where you've been focusing new contract wins? Or is that representative of actual, I guess, new initiatives and kind of a genuine drive on your existing contracts?

Very good. I think I should take that, Mr. Lewis. So James, so we have -- if you look at the -- so first of all, let's acknowledge that our aftersales business is up. I'm super pleased to see that we're continuing to grow our aftersales business. We'll talk about more about that in Q4 in an Investor Day for you. Aftersales in APAC is down a little bit. I don't think that will be a big surprise based upon our narrative of recent times, but we've seen good growth in Europe and Africa and in the Americas. It is a result of some group-wide initiatives we are running to increase our penetration or our retention rate of customers over the first 10 years of a vehicle's life and other initiatives we have in our aftersales business. So I would hope we will continue to see momentum in our aftersales business, not just into the second half, but to subsequent years. This is the result of the actions we're taking across our business. We'll tell you more about that during the fourth quarter.

We will now move on to our next question from Andy Grobler of BNP Paribas.

A couple from me, if I may. Firstly, just on the OEMs, you talked about their focus on efficiency. To what extent is that impacting pricing and their relationship with you? Are they -- are you a potential source of cost savings for some of those OEMs that are under pressure? And then secondly, just on inventory, I saw an GBP 18 million write-down. That's higher than it's been in the last couple of years. Could you just talk through what drove that and what your expectations are for the second half?

Andrew, thank you very much. I'll do question one and hand 2 to you, Adrian, if that's okay. So look, it's clear, isn't it, Andy, which OEMs are under pressure. So the Chinese OEMs, although they're taking market share, are not hugely profitable. And a lot of the Western OEMs at the same time are also lowered margin guidance for the year. You can see some of the guidance in some of the European OEMs in the range of 1% to 3% of the operating profit level. If I take a step back, when we set our midterm targets, we gave guidance of operating margins of 6% over the medium term. We were a little above 6% last year. We're guiding to around 6% this year. That is a reflection of 2 things. It's a reflection of the fact that this industry for OEMs is incredibly competitive. They're under cost pressure and margin pressure. And therefore, we should expect a little bit of downward pressure from OEM partners.

And then at the same time, so our other initiatives inside the group around efficiencies in our cost base, the growth of our value-added services businesses in finance and insurance and aftersales will give us a little bit of upward pressure. So I think this is exactly what we expected to happen in the industry. We've been flagging it for some time. We will create some upward pressure in margin. I think we'll see a little bit of downward pressure from OEMs at the same time. Hence, the reason we've said 6% operating margins into the medium term.

And in relation to inventory, look, the first thing to say is look, inventory is in excellent shape. If you look at the level of inventory in the group, just over GBP 2 billion, very consistent with where it was at the start of the year and lower than it was at half time last year, and the business has grown its revenues by around 9%. So I think absolute inventory, we look at in broad terms as being in excellent shape. The benefits of all the work we're doing around [indiscernible] really coming to bear fruit there.

You're right about the inventory write-downs. When we step into the contract exit conversation, particularly around APAC, we have seen a need to take some inventory write-downs relating to those contract exits, 13 exits in the half in the region, response to a very dynamic and changing market situation. It is slightly higher than we would normally expect to do, and it is related to those contracts that we're going to get out. This is about us making sure we've got the right portfolio, making sure we've got the right inventory on the ground. The market shifted very dynamically across APAC, which is why we're taking the steps we're taking across the board, whether it be around contracts, inventory and our cost base.

Andy, I hope that's helpful.

We will now move on to our next question from Arthur Truslove of Citi.

The first one, sort of big picture question. So it seems like the Chinese OEMs are causing you significant problems in Asia and yet are a key contributor to your growth in LatAm. Could you just run us through once again how this can be the case? And it would be great if you could explain the key differences between your value proposition to them in LatAm versus, say, what it would be in Asia or indeed what it wouldn't be in Asia?

And second question around Toyota. So are you able to just remind us how you're getting on with Toyota new product launches. So in particular, how is the electric vehicle progressing in Hong Kong and Singapore? And also, how are we getting on with the new RAV4 launches? So has that happened in Greece, Belgium, Romania and indeed Hong Kong, Singapore? And how are those things influencing performance?

Thank you very much, Arthur. That looks like that's 2 questions for me. Arthur, with these types of questions, I should be charging you money. So to your point around Chinese OEMs, 25% of our group now of our volumes from Chinese OEMs, that's grown 40% year-over-year. And that's reflective of the acquisitions we've made and the contract wins we've had. Actually across our business, including APAC, we've seen super strong performance in the Americas, super strong performance in Europe, excluding BYD and BeLux, by the way, we still have super performance in those businesses.

And then we have seen -- we don't talk about it very much, but if you look at Australia, where we're growing that Foton business that it's not even yet a year old, but really growing quite nicely for us. Deepal gaining share as the market moves to more to EV. Our value proposition to Chinese OEMs is super duper like it is to all of our OEM partners, which is we'll help drive performance for you in small to medium-sized and more complex markets. And that's exactly what Inchcape does. I was in China with Romeo and the rest of the group team just a few weeks ago. And the Chinese EV brands, where they want to go is exactly matching with Inchcape, which is we'll run small to medium-sized and more complex markets for them while they get on with the super big markets.

Now there is a difference in Asia. We were a little slower with contract wins in Asia than we would have seen previously. But over the last year or so, we've added more Chinese OEMs into that APAC business. I've mentioned Deepal, I've mentioned Foton. You've seen us announce XPENG today in Brunei. So I think our value proposition is absolutely intact. But in some of the really, really big markets, and I'll give you an example of Philippines or Thailand, these are much bigger markets as the Chinese are much more likely to take those directly than themselves.

Now to your point around Toyota, look, Toyota is an incredible OEM. We worked with them for over 60 years. What I would say as follows: in terms of product launches, we've seen very promising take-up of those EVs that Toyota is launching. bZ3X in Hong Kong has been really strong for us. We'll bring that brand into other markets for us in APAC. We're launching around mid-teens new products into Singapore, including EV brands. And we've seen brands like CHR+, which is an EV brand for Toyota launch in Europe and other places. So that Toyota portfolio is moving quite nicely for us.

And to your final point around RAV4, that is a super successful product. And as you can imagine, Arthur, we are fighting to get more RAV4 in each of our Toyota markets, where they happen to be in Asia or in Europe and Africa. That's a very successful product. And if Toyota could manufacture more, we'd certainly take them. I hope that's helpful, Arthur.

We will now take our next question from Tim Ramskill of Bank of America.

I've got 3, please. So 2 are focused on APAC and one on the Americas. So on APAC, if we look sort of this half versus 2 years ago, your profitability is down around about 2/3. And I guess I'm interested in your thoughts around how much of that can be recovered. So to what extent are the factors that you identify, you think short-lived? Just interested in how we can potentially get back to where we were.

And then secondly, you talked quite a bit and there's been a few questions already around contract exits. If you can just help us with the phasing, partly because you've talked about more exits. So how much of what you've done has already landed in the first half? How much will come sort of second half, but also then into 2027, just some sense of the shape of that?

And then finally, as a third question on the Americas. Performance is extremely strong. Just a little bit nervous that we might be here in 12 months' time talking about how tough the comps were. So just interested in your thoughts on the sustainability of that performance in the Americas.

Very good, Tim. Yes. Thank you, and thank you for the amusing point on question 3. So I'll hand to Adrian for the first 2, and I'll pick up on the Americas.

Tim, when you look at the first half performance, I think we've been very clear. There's a -- Duncan used the phrase, a confluence of issues in Australia impacting performance, whether it be a very rapid shift in customer demand profiles arising from a fuel crisis compounded by supply interruption of the right product set to address that market. We've seen over the last couple of years, substantial changes in customer purchasing trends, particularly in premium segments in places like Indonesia, Philippines.

And so I think that you should -- we should think about all of the things we have been doing, whether it be addressing our cost base, whether it be managing our portfolio as part of rebuilding Asia back towards those heavy days of 2024 and prior to that. So I think the recovery process will not be a short-term recovery. You shouldn't pencil us in getting back to that level either in the second half of this year or indeed next year. It is going to be a longer-term recovery because some of those shifts you'd have to think of as structural.

When we think about the exits, a lot of those, we've been -- Duncan used the word collaboration earlier, speaking with our OEM partners, making sure we preserve those global relationships and manage those exits in an orderly fashion. So those will have been affected in the first half and will take and will happen and will effectively operationally happen through the second half. So there'll be a bit of help in the second half, but more materially so into 2027.

And to your question around, is there more to come or sort of influence of there more to come. Look, we've been clear actually, we're continuing to discuss certain contracts with OEM partners. And you'll have to forgive us, we'll update you when it's right for us to do so around those steps. But in line with all of our other communications, we'll be as clear and as transparent as we possibly can be.

So Tim, on to the Americas then. Look, I'll take a step back, if I may, and then answer your question directly. In our midterm guidance, our midterm guidance ultimately ends up in EPS growth of greater than 10%, One of the inputs to that is how fast do we think our markets can grow on our outperformance. Our guidance on unit volume growth is 3% to 5%. And that reflects the fact that we have a diverse geographic portfolio of markets, and we'll always find some up, some down and some flat. Colombia and Peru are growing like topsy at the minute, above 40% year-over-year growth. Do I think that's sustainable into the long term? No, I don't because they are approaching their historic highs in terms of the market size. Now there is some supportive politics in that, that we think over the medium term, but they're starting to top out in terms of compared to historic norms.

At the same time, we have Chile, which is actually at the lower end of its historic norms. This year, we think it will be somewhere between 320,000 and 330,000 TIV. New political regime in place looks set to grow a little bit faster in the medium term. So let's see. So to your point, will we be saying there's tough comps in the Americas next year? Maybe. But we're here to deliver a geographic portfolio globally that enables us to deliver the greater than 10% EPS growth.

Can I just squeeze in one -- that's great. Can I just squeeze in one very quick follow-up just around contracts. I think in your preprepared remarks, Duncan, that we watched, you talk about how you're actually sort of considering exiting certain contracts you've only won relatively recently. Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick there. But interested in just sort of as you think about new opportunities in light of what's been quite a lot of ins and outs, how are you thinking about assessing new opportunities? Are you thinking any differently to what you might have done?

Look, I think we have learned a lot. If you look at -- if you go back just a few years ago, we had a very stable portfolio of contracts, and we've not seen very many ins or outs. The last 4 years, we've seen over -- I guess, it must be close down to 60 contract wins with a higher number of exits than you've seen as we continue to learn about how to make sure that our contracts work for us and our OEM partners. So we're going to continue to do that. I think we're getting better and better at portfolio management. We're getting better and better at winning contracts and making sure they work for us and our OEM partners. We'll give you a view about that in a little bit more detail during the fourth quarter at an Investor Day when we'll talk about how these contracts have performed over time.

But we're going to -- we are increasingly disciplined about the way we think of contracts. You can see that in the first half with 13 exits in APAC and 2 in the Americas. But don't forget, let's take a step back, what you do see is very strong contract growth for us right across the business.

We have no further questions on the line. I'll now hand over to Rob for webcast questions.

Thanks, Laura. We have a couple of questions. Firstly, on tax, Adrian, from Julian Daly, one of our private investors, what is -- why is the effective tax rate for the half year higher than the guidance range?

Thank you, Julian. Tax rate, 31.4% was the effective tax rate. We guide 30% to 31%. It's essentially a geographic mix point, a higher profit contribution from the Americas where tax rates are naturally higher, and we also have to consider withholding tax on dividend repatriation. So that gives you the reason. 31.4% certainly is exactly the same as the full year last year on an effective tax rate. So very consistent trajectory there.

Thanks, Adrian. A couple of questions from David Roton at Deutsche Bank Numis. These are for you, Duncan, I think. Firstly, going back to Tim's question on brand exits, how many of the exited brands are with Chinese OEMs? And what gives you the confidence that the new Chinese OEM contracts are better placed compared to the more traditional brands that we're winning business with?

Very good. So Rob, there was a broad set of exits across, of course, our brands in APAC. You could see 5 or 6 with Stellantis brand, but there were some with Chinese brands or 2, as I recall, with Chinese brands. And look, if you -- the way we think about our OEM partners, we're clear about who we want to build our business with globally. You'll forgive me if I don't say that on a public call. And you can see us win more and more contracts with those. I was in China just a few weeks ago. You can see us winning more contracts with Changan and with Great Wall Motors. We referenced XPENG earlier on this call. We know we can build good businesses with those, and we'll continue to do that. But at the same time, we've been winning contracts with European OEMs and with Japanese OEMs like Subaru. We know we can make these work across our portfolio. And I'd remind us all on the call, our growth through these contracts is coming through quite nicely. You can see it in the Americas, and you can see it in Europe and Africa.

And also from David, is the rapid shift in their products in Australia temporary or structural? And have we got the right product mix and portfolio in the second half and beyond to allow us to serve that market well?

This is a great question. So when you look at how we planned the Australia market, Adrian and I were there just in January to listen to this, and he and I were there just a couple of weeks ago. That market has fast forwarded 3 years in 6 months. So if you look at EV penetration in January, just over 8%; in June, nearly 25%. That shift, we expect it to happen towards -- back end of '28, 2029. Do I think that shift is permanent? Yes, I do. July, you can see that tick up a little bit further. Where are we with our portfolio in Australia? We have 2 super Chinese brands that we've launched with Deepal and Foton, both building up. They're in their early phases, but building up. And then in the second half, we see more launches from Subaru in New Energy Vehicles and EV, which will improve our top and bottom line performance in Australia.

Very good. And the final question is from [indiscernible] Capital. How does EV penetration influence your strategy? And are you seeing pure EV manufacturers looking for independent distribution in your markets?

Well, look, I'll give you a view -- let me answer the second question first, Rob. I think their view is exactly the same as ours. You should use distribution in small to medium-sized and more complicated markets. That's what we do, and we can really add value to OEM partners. And the really big markets, U.K., Germany, they should run them themselves and integrate their value chain in those markets. And then remind me what the first question was.

How does EV penetration in our markets influence strategy?

Well, our strategy, whether you look at EV penetration or growth, it comes down to the same thing. We need a portfolio of OEMs in each of our markets that enables us to move at the pace that the market moves to a lower carbon mobility future to use my jargon in that regard. So it's important for growth and for us managing our markets that we have a good portfolio of OEMs. And we like OEMs that can provide us with EV and hybrid and ICE products and in some cases, hydrogen to enable that move. So multi-drivetrain, multi-OEMs in markets really suits Inchcape.

On that note, no other questions, if you want to sum up, Duncan?

Very good. Listen, thank you very much for joining our webcast today. During the first half, Inchcape continued to deliver on strategy with really disciplined capital allocation. And as we look out to this year and future years, we reaffirm our midterm guidance of growing our EPS by greater than 10% per annum. If you have any further questions, please follow up with a wonderful Rob. In the meantime, thank you for joining.

Hello, and welcome to Inchcape's 2026 Q1 results. We are joined today by Adrian Lewis, Group Chief Financial Officer; and Rob Gurner, Head of Investor Relations. [Operator Instructions]. I'd now like to hand the call over to Adrian. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sergey, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I am Adrian Lewis, Group CFO. Before I update you on Inchcape's performance in Q1, I wanted to say that I'll be covering off our quarterly trading calls from now.

Our full year and half year presentations will continue to be jointly hosted and presented by Duncan Tait, our Group CEO, and myself. So today, I will give an overview of trading and strategic execution during Q1 with some details on our regional performance and update you on the outlook for the year ahead, which remains unchanged. We'll then have a Q&A session with Rob Gurner, our Head of IR, who will field any questions from the audiocast platform.

So let's begin. Inchcape continues to deliver on our strategy and in line with our expectations. Our Q1 revenue performance benefited from our diversified market and brand portfolio, which provides resilience to our business.

Organic revenue growth in the quarter was 6%, and our reported revenue grew by 8% to GBP 2.3 billion. This growth was substantially driven by the continued scaling of our distribution contracts secured in recent years, resulting in share gains in a range of markets, together with supportive market conditions in certain regions. In addition, we have continued to expand our core brand portfolio.

As a result, we have outperformed our markets during the period with Inchcape volumes up 9% against an Inchcape market growth of 6%. Our volume growth was ahead of our organic revenue growth as a result of share gains and regional mix with a faster-growing Americas where average selling prices are lower. It's worth noting that our revenue growth performance in Q1 was against comparators, which are relatively soft, and these become more challenging as we progress through the year ahead. In addition, Q1 is generally our smallest quarter of the year due to the overall natural seasonality of our markets.

I'll now run through our regional performance, starting with the Americas, where we delivered strong growth with supportive market conditions. Our market volumes in the Americas were up 18%, with very high levels of market growth in Colombia and Peru and a growing Chile. With those favorable demand conditions, we saw strong performance in the region. For the rest of 2026, we continue to expect the market environment in the Americas to remain supportive with a typical seasonal weighting towards the second half.

Next on to APAC, where market volumes were up 4%, but our market share moderated and we underperformed in the region, continuing the trends we saw in half 2 2025. We see further challenges across APAC. The premium segment, where we over-index in some markets continues to be weak. And in addition, we are seeing increasing competition from Chinese brands in a number of markets, including Australia, where the macroeconomic environment has softened and our core brand performance in that market has been weak.

However, there are some partial offsets to this with momentum building across a number of our recently won contracts with Chinese OEMs, including Foton and Deepal in Australia and Great Wall Motors in Indonesia. Looking across the region, and as we mentioned last month, we are taking action to address the challenges and to drive our operational performance across APAC.

These actions include enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners on product positioning and a cost reduction program, which is focused on our regional headquarters and in specific markets as well as the optimization of our contract portfolio in the region. We will provide an update on our progress with these actions at our half year results in July. For the remainder of 2026, we expect to see continued challenges across our markets in APAC, including Australia, which will impact our first half revenue and margins.

This will be compounded by some brand supply phasing in half 1, which we highlighted in March as our key OEMs reconfigure their facilities for new energy vehicle production. However, the management actions that we are implementing will start to improve our business performance and help support margins in the second half of the year.

On to Europe and Africa, where market volumes are up 1%, and we grew our market share. The market outperformance was supported by a strong delivery in our core business, a meaningful contribution from distribution contracts, one in recent years and further supported by a good performance from the recently acquired business in Iceland and our business in Africa also performed well. We expect to see continued momentum in Europe and Africa for the remainder of 2026, with a full year contribution from the Icelandic acquisition and a growing contribution from contracts won in recent years.

And now I'd like to touch on the impact of the Middle East situation on our markets during Q1. Overall, we have seen no direct impact on our business to date, despite there being some immaterial disruption to logistics in our Europe and Africa region. We are closely monitoring consumer demand trends across our markets. And so far, these trends have remained unchanged.

And now on to strategy. We continue to make progress against our Accelerate+ strategy during Q1. Our objective to scale our business is highlighted by our successful track record in winning distribution contracts, including the award of contracts from Volvo in Ecuador and Deepal in Barbados. We also saw continued momentum from contracts won in recent years, which, as I mentioned earlier, made a substantial contribution to our growth performance in the quarter.

We are also maintaining a strong focus on optimization across the group through various initiatives in vehicle parts and finance and insurance, with ongoing cost actions and even closer collaboration with our OEM partners. On capital allocation, we remain disciplined and value-focused. With our commitment to share buybacks, we have -- we made continued progress with our latest program of GBP 175 million and we have repurchased approximately GBP 27 million as at the 29th of April.

Consequently, over the last 21 months, we have reduced our share count by around 14% as a result of the share buybacks. On acquisitions, we see these as a critical part of how we will drive shareholder value. And to that end, we remain disciplined on valuations as we look across an active pipeline of bolt-on acquisitions, and we continue to look for value accretion, particularly in existing markets.

And finally, on to outlook. We are today reiterating our guidance for 2026. We continue to expect a year of growth at constant currency and in line with our medium-term guidance. We continue to expect another half 2 weighted revenue and profit performance. This is partly due to an increasing contribution from the Americas, which has a typical second half seasonality. And as I mentioned earlier, we continue to expect some brand supply phasing in APAC during the year and this will skew our business performance in the region to the second half, further supported by the benefits of the management actions we are taking.

So this year, in line with our medium-term guidance, we expect to deliver EPS growth of greater than 10%. And as we said in March, this will be driven by organic volume growth towards the lower end of the 3% to 5% guidance range. Resilient operating margins of around 6% and a free cash flow conversion rate of circa 100%, which we are deploying through our disciplined approach to capital allocation.

And finally, I wanted to say that in the context of the Middle East and in an uncertain and fast evolving macro environment, we continue to manage our business in an agile and dynamic manner with our OEM partners. In particular, we will maintain a clear and focused approach in adapting our sales and operational planning processes to track any changes that we see in consumer demand. That's it from me. So now let's take your questions. Over to you, Sergey.

[Operator Instructions]. Now our first question is from Abi Bell from UBS.

Just 2 from me, please. Firstly, on the demand outlook, your statement alluded to lead indicators running stable, but could you give us more detail on what you're tracking and what you think is pointing to in Q2 so far? And I appreciate the impact of the conflicts in the Middle East is very hard to predict at this stage. But could you share how quickly you've seen consumer confidence impacted or your volumes turn in the past after other crisis?

And then secondly, on APAC. Given your industry tracker shows double-digit growth across most markets and Hong Kong more than doubling in Q1, could you provide a bit more detail about the drivers of the weaker APAC performance and what needs to change for these headwinds to ease and deliver the H2 uplift you're guiding to?

There's a lot there, Abi. Thank you very much. So let's start with the lead indicators question, the sorts of things we're looking at are the number of people visiting our websites, the number of test drives that are happening in our showrooms and in the third-party dealers that we work with and the number of people engaging with the various different platforms that we engage with in terms of generating and advertising our brands in the different markets.

And what we've talked about is no real change in demand and the level and volume of people looking at looking at vehicle purchases in the different markets and we operate. And we operate in markets that tend to see different rates of growth, and you see that in our market tracker. Those demand levels have remained stable. The only thing we have seen in a couple of different markets, particularly where we've seen prices hike in fuel or whether there's been duty changes, we have seen some shifts in the types of vehicles people are looking at towards new energy vehicles.

Perhaps that's driven by a taxation change or, as I said, by a fuel incident and fuel shortages such as the ones we're seeing in Australia right now, and that does tend to skew some of our lead indicators. It hasn't yet shown up in some of the underlying demand and then the actual orders we're taking it hasn't yet shown up in the cars that people are purchasing through us. But they're the sorts of things that we look at on a day-to-day.

How long does it take before we see changes in demand or changes in the macro environment impact demand? That varies enormously by market. And one of the things that we do as a group is we invest a lot of money in AI and technology that help us link those changes in website traffic and sort of underlying indicators of demand, which are different by market and that's what feeds into our sales and operational planning processes. And that's what feeds how many vehicles we bring into our markets.

It can be some months sometimes before you see those macro indicators really have an impact in demand. And you see that in our market tracker with the markets that we're working in, in aggregate, up 6% across the first quarter.

On to APAC and Q1, you're right, we've seen some very strong market performance -- market growth numbers. Hong Kong was an outlier. That's arisen as a result of a regulatory change and a taxation change where the incentives on electric vehicles. have been effectively substantially withdrawn, which has pulled a lot of demand forward, and you see in our market tracker Hong Kong up over 100% in the quarter.

That's not a sustainable level of growth in the market, we don't see the Hong Kong market materially growing this year. And then in terms of the management actions we're taking across a number of fronts, collaboration with our OEM partners, really working with our OEMs across the different -- whether it's the Japanese OEMs, whether it's the European OEMs or our Chinese OEMs to make sure we've got the right products that are best presented as those markets evolve.

And they are the things that sometimes take a little bit of time before they hit the market, which is why they will be more supportive in the second half. That, together with supply phasing in our core brand in Australia will also support a better second half. And then finally, the management actions we're taking around cost. We'll give more detail on some of those actions particularly around our portfolio of brands that we're working with across APAC in our July results announcements. I think that covers all your questions, Abi, hopefully.

We'll now move to our next question from Tim Ramskill from Bank of America.

Two for me, please. The first is just, I guess, you're facing a dynamic of positive operational leverage in the Americas and then the opposite within APAC. So are you broadly anticipating those 2 effects offset each other because there might be some meaningful profit moves even at a group level, as I said, a bit of setting off of each other.

And then the second question, just coming back to APAC, I'm just keen to understand sort of have all the actions you feel you need to take, have they been made already have all those actions happened? And is there more to come? And again, maybe just expand on when you feel the benefits of the work you've done there, we will start to see. Is it just H2? Or does it flow through into 2027?

Okay. Thanks, Tim. In terms of that operating leverage question and effectively, I hear what you say is the offset between the Americas and the APAC. Yes, we've underlined guidance today, and our job is to manage a portfolio of businesses in a diverse set of geographies with a diverse set of brands to deliver on our medium-term guidance of around 6% from a margin perspective and part of the operating leverage that we will see in the Americas will help to offset some of the challenges we're seeing in APAC, and that's why we've been able to underline our guidance, which is, as I said earlier, in line with our medium-term targets.

In terms of APAC and the management actions we are taking. I've given a few examples. Some of it is already coming to bear. So if you think about the bZ3X, which is new EV playing in Hong Kong and that pull forward of demand, we've been a beneficiary of that. We've got RAV4 hybrid coming into the markets. We've repriced some of our luxury MPV products in Hong Kong to support a more competitive positioning of our brands there. That's just the start.

There's much more to come around cost and also, we've talked about optimization of our brand portfolio. We haven't been specific about that because we're working with our partners to make sure we do all of those things in the right way, and we'll say more about that in July.

And you think the benefits will be sort of very evident in H2? Or are we going to have to be a bit more patient?

The benefits will start to support a better position in half 2. Yes, that's exactly. And that's what we said in our statement earlier. Yes. Sorry, I didn't cover that part of your question.

We now move to our next question from Akshat Kacker from JPMorgan.

Akshat from JPMorgan. A couple of questions, please. The first one on the macro environment. And when we think about higher logistic costs and inflation uncertainties, and we've definitely had a few of those over the last years, could you just remind us on how these are discussed and negotiated with the OEMs, please? Just the process, if you could just run us through that.

And the second question is, just trying to get some more details by region, if possible in terms of the Q1 trading update. You've talked about volumes up 9%, organic growth of -- could you just give us some more clarity across the regions, if that's possible?

Very good. Okay. So if I take the macro and the effects of inflation, from a logistics perspective, there's various different ways we work. But if I think about the Latin American business, logistics, we take very long positions on and in relation to some of our other parts of the world, so somewhere like Europe or Asia Pac, where we typically work with our OEMs who have substantial logistics operations in the region to price vehicles at a landed cost level.

Any inflation that comes through is in the round part of the negotiation of how we manage product, how we manage price and how we manage our position of those brands in any given market. That's a monthly and quarterly and annual conversation that we have with our OEM partners. It's very closely linked to that sales and operational process.

Operational planning process that I mentioned earlier, and we talk about so very much because that is at the very, very center of being an absolutely brilliant distributor understanding where the cost base, where the vehicles are being priced, where they sit competitively and how we might need to moderate specifications or adjust the portfolio in any given market to make sure it has the best very -- very best possible chance of success. That's part of what we do. It's part of how we engage with our OEMs every day, every week and every month at a market level.

From a sort of unpacking the regional position. I think what I -- what we've said is, look, APAC was a region that was up 4% and our market share moderated. So -- and we underperformed the market continuing some of the themes we saw in the second half. We talked a bit about our core brand in Australia due to some supply phasing being weak and you can see that in some of the market share stats which are available on the public -- in the public domain.

And then you look at the Americas, which is a nice offset to that with a region where we have scaled positions in the likes of Colombia and Peru, where you've seen very, very strong growth. Colombia and Peru up 30% to 40% each. And then Chile, our single largest market in the group, up 6%, and that was at a fairly flat start to the quarter, but March was a mid-teens growth. So positive momentum there. We've called that market at around 330 for this year. Last year, it was 310. Long run average for Chile is a 350, 375 market up to 400 at times. So there's runway for that market to grow, but we just continue to hold our position around the speed of that bounce back.

And then Europe and Africa is a relatively benign market around 1%. But our business outperformed the contracts we've won in recent years and the core performance. of our core brand in Europe with hybrid products performing very, very well. We've seen much stronger growth than the 1% seen in that market. And you'll see more about that at a numerical level again in July when we do our -- when we unpack the regions at it a bit more.

We'll now take our next question from David Brockton from Deutsche Bank.

I've just got a question to sort of understand Australia, the Australian dynamic a bit better. It seems like the intense competition you flagged in Asia at the full year is now present in Australia as well. Can you just maybe touch on how broad-based that is? Is it any particular brand that are driving that?

And then secondly, is there any reason why given that it does seem to have spread a bit within the APAC region, why it wouldn't spread anywhere else across the business?

Very good. So look, Australia, yes, we've talked about increasing an intensifying competition from Chinese brands in Australia. That's very consistent with what we said at the end of last year as well. because we saw the trend starting to come through. Chinese brands last year in Australia were just over 20%. And in the first quarter of this year, they're just in and around the 30% level.

I won't call out any one particular brand that's made those gains. And as I talked about, our core brand in that market, was performed weak. But we've also seen good performance and good momentum building in our Deepal brand, which is an EV product. We've also seen the Foton brand that we brought into that market start to gain some traction as we step into that youth segment or trucks, as you may know it more locally.

So that's some of the dynamics that's happening in Australia. We saw them happening last year, but it is a highly competitive market, in a market where there's a bit of disruption in terms of fuel. So customer choices are beginning to evolve a little bit. And as I said earlier, we've seen some of that some of those lead indicators of what people are searching for on websites change a little bit in favor of new energy vehicles. But why wouldn't that transpire across the rest of the group?

But if you think about the Americas business in many of our markets, Chinese brands are already above 30%, and we built a very, very good business, and we have very long-standing and broad-based partnerships with Chinese brands in that part of the world. And Europe and Africa is very much at the starting point of that journey and the contracts we have won in recent years will help us to continue to grow our share in that market across a range of OEMs who are in -- in a world where we should recognize it is an intensifying competitive set with an increasing number of players in the market.

[Operator Instructions]. And our next question is from Arthur Truslove from Citi.

A couple for me, please. So first question, can you just remind us how many contracts you won in 2023 and 2024 and how long it typically takes to get to sort of meaningful levels of profit per contract, so perhaps GBP 1 million or so per contract.

Second question, can you just talk a little bit about the contract and M&A pipeline? I guess, obviously, 2 contract wins in Q1, if I remember correctly. What's the nature of what's in the pipeline there? And also in terms of M&A, is it sort of very much bolt-on type stuff that you're looking at or big or bigger bits and pieces?

Very good. So '22 -- sorry, '23 and '24, which contracts did we win? I'll speak more broadly, if I can. So we've won over 50 contracts, about 80% of them are with Chinese brands, in various different markets across all 3 of our regions, we've secured contracts. Typically speaking, we bring those brands in and what we've talked about in the past. We bring them in with relatively low levels of capital deployment as we test and learn how those brands feature and operate in a given market. It takes us 1, 2 or 3 years to really figure that out. And it's only really in year 3, 4 and 5 where we start to see those brands scale and gain real traction.

Now we've learned an awful lot about how to bring these brands into markets over the last years, and we're getting better at it every single time. And one of the things we have learned is that when we sign contracts, it can -- it's taking us a little bit longer to get those brands into market. Sometimes that's navigating homologation processes. It's getting specifications at a very granular level agreed with our OEM partners or making -- getting production and allocation set up for us. It's taking us a bit longer to get brands launched than we perhaps originally thought.

But it's still in that once we've got the brand into the market, it's still taking us 1, 2 and 3 up to 4 to 5 years before we get real scale in a given market. And scale is 1% to 2% of the local market share. That's what we say on average these brands are going to deliver.

On contract wins and M&A pipeline. What we've said in the past is we saw the very high levels. I think it was 22 contracts we signed in 2023. It was over what would the normal run rate would be, and we would expect to sign mid- to high single digits on an annualized basis and 2 in the first quarter puts us on our run rate for around that sort of level. So we're still seeing contracts win at the run rate we would expect them to be won.

And then from an M&A pipeline perspective, we have a range of opportunities that we are working with partners on. It is in the bolt-on space. That is what we've said. We've also ruled out acquisitions in the near term in APAC, whilst we focus on execution in those markets. So think Latin America, I think Europe and Africa as opportunities. And as you would expect us to do, we continue to act with discipline around valuation. We continue to look at share buybacks as a viable source of deployment.

But we also see value and if I look at that business we acquired in Iceland last year, that is performing very, very well. If I look at the way the markets are performing and the businesses we are able to build following Derco in Latin America, we see deploying capital effectively in M&A as a real part of delivering accelerate us over the coming years.

Thank you. It appears there are currently no further questions over the phone and neither over the webcast. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Adrian for closing remarks. Over to you, sir.

Thank you, Sergey, and thank you for joining us this morning. And so to summarize, Inchcape performed well in the first quarter, and we remain well placed to deliver our target of more than 10% EPS growth this year and over the medium term. That's all from us. Please get in touch with Rob, if you'd like any follow-up on today's discussion.

Well, good morning, everyone. I'm Duncan Tait, Group CEO; and I'm joined by our Group CFO, Adrian Lewis. Here's today's agenda. I'll give an update and overview on market -- end market context. Adrian will then run through 2025 results, and I'll sum up and discuss the outlook for 2026. Today's presentation is available on our website and a recording of today's session will be available later today. After the presentation concludes, we'll take your questions.

So let's begin. Inchcape delivered a strong 2025 performance against the backdrop of tariff-related disruption and economic uncertainty, reaffirming the strength of our diversified and scaled business. Our colleagues in the Americas and the Europe and Africa regions posted record PBT performances. Against a number of challenges, APAC delivered a better H2 performance, and we're working with our OEM partners and across the value chain to drive further performance improvements.

We continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy, winning more distribution contracts and executing an acquisition in a new market for Inchcape. During the year, we returned around GBP 340 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, grew EPS and DPS by 13% and with leverage of just 0.4x, we're ready to go again in 2026, starting with a new share buyback program of GBP 175 million.

Now this slide shows how we delivered against all of our key growth drivers on the left-hand side of this chart. That includes the financial metrics I mentioned, including our resilient margins, as well as vehicle volumes, customer and colleague related metrics. And on those dynamics, we continue to build on our strong customer reputation in the industry with a 6% increase in our scores on reputation.com.

In addition, our employee engagement score of 81%, up 4 points from the previous year, is a clear signal of Inchcape's collaborative, entrepreneurial and high-performance culture, which is a testament to the caliber and talent of our 16,000 people across our 40 markets. Last year, we generated GBP 315 million in free cash flow, which clearly highlights our cash generative and capital-light model. This capital was deployed to drive growth and shareholder returns with a 13% increase in dividends per share, GBP 238 million invested in share buybacks and GBP 35 million utilized on the Iceland acquisition. And we have a healthy pipeline of bolt-on M&A opportunities in place to supplement our organic growth.

This delivery of our strategy enabled us to deliver return on capital employed of 29% and helped us grow EPS by 13%. And we continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy by scaling and optimizing our regions. Our objective here is to develop our OEM partner portfolio and geographic footprint, thereby enhancing the resilience in our earnings profile. And this will help to drive our progress against our ambition to achieve 10% market share across our markets.

Last year, we grew distribution contracts won in previous years. with these contracts being a key driver of our organic revenue growth. We're also awarded 10 new distribution contracts with existing OEM brands, including New Holland and Ethiopia in Kenya, BYD in Lithuania and Latvia, expand in Colombia and GAC AION in Greece as well as new partners, smart in Colombia, Uruguay and Ecuador and Iveco in Hong Kong.

To drive operational execution, we continue to optimize our business in a number of ways. Firstly, we further rationalized our brand portfolio mutually exiting 4 immaterial contracts with Komatsu in Ethiopia and 3 Geely contracts in smaller markets in the Americas. In addition, we continue to recycle capital by divesting nonCore assets, and we grew our third-party retail network, enabling broader in-market coverage in a capital-efficient way.

We continue to drive the penetration of value-added services, in particular, growing our distribution of relatively high-margin OEM-certified parts as well as delivering and developing financed insurance products by utilizing our global scale and partnerships. We also optimized our business by further collaborating with our OEM partners on product and inventory management, supported by our consistent execution and differentiated technology-based sales and operation planning processes.

To that end, we positioned ourselves well for the second half of the year from a stock perspective, successfully reducing the buildup of inventory in the first half with inventory cover at the end of 2025, remaining flat year-on-year. Our sales and operational planning processes are supported by AI in a number of areas.

In our parts business, we run pricing optimization and demand models, which enable us to trade tens of thousands of parts [ are ] optimal price points. We're also leveraging AI to drive innovation across our business. For example, we recently launched a vehicle pricing algorithm in Chile, which analyzes price to volume elasticity to ensure we price vehicles even more accurately.

Back to our optimization activities. We've also taken decisive action on our cost base, reinforcing our devolved operating model, driving efficiencies and tackling challenges in certain markets. To that end, during the year, we initiated a cost reduction program across the group, with a particular focus on the APAC region.

Next, I want to discuss our diversified and scaled OEM portfolio. We have long-standing relationships with many OEMs, some of which go back for over 50 years. Our role in the automotive distribution value chain is more important than ever. We continue to support these manufacturers in an increasingly complex and fast-moving environment, growing their volumes and market share in existing markets and helping them to enter new markets.

We also have some relatively new OEMs in our portfolio on the right-hand side of this slide who we've worked with for just a few years. Of those, I wanted to highlight that we are seeing BYD continuing to in-source distribution in medium to large scale markets in Europe. This is a BYD only dynamic, and we are seeing our other OEM partners rely on Inchcape more than ever before.

On the next slide, here is some market context in what was a transforming automotive industry in 2025. In general terms, the new energy vehicle transition is becoming more of a multi powertrain story. Importantly, as a powertrain agnostic business and with our deep specialist market knowledge, Inchcape is well positioned to support our OEMs in their individual new energy transition journeys.

Overall, market volumes across our markets grew by 2% in 2025 with the indirect impact of tariff-related disruption affecting demand in our markets in the first half of the year. Inchcape outperformed the market, growing our volumes by 3%. The macro environment improved in the second half in a number of our markets, particularly in the Americas and the Europe and Africa Regions, offsetting a challenging backdrop in Asia. In the Americas, market volumes were up 8%, with a multi-dritrain approach playing out. In Chile, our largest market there, there was a 3% TIV growth during the year with a stable market environment. Colombia and Peru experienced strong market growth, while there was a weaker growth in some markets like Costa Rica.

In Europe, another multi drivetrain story. Southern European markets like Greece and Bulgaria remained strong, while there was weakness in certain Northern European markets like Finland and Estonia. In APAC, BEV adoption continued to accelerate, partly as a result of the successful rollout of BEV in Asian markets, Chinese brands have grown market share across the region in recent years. These dynamics have created a highly competitive environment in most markets in the region. In addition, the premium segment in APAC remains weak with consumers in that market segment continuing to hold off on buying higher-value vehicles.

To date, we've not seen any similar weaknesses in the premium segment in our other regions. Finally, on APAC, Australia, one of the largest vehicle markets in which we operate remains resilient but it is an increasingly competitive environment. That's it from me for now. I'll hand over to Adrian.

Thank you, Duncan, and good morning, everyone. I'll take you through our results for 2025. We generated revenues of GBP 9.1 billion with organic revenue growth of 1% and resilient operating margins of 6.2%. Distribution contract wins were a significant portion of growth during the year. Adjusted PBT was GBP 443 million, up 3% in constant currency. And our PBT performance was supported by a contribution of GBP 17 million from the gains arising from the divestment of non-core assets, while translational currency headwinds were approximately GBP 19 million.

Excluding the disposal gains, our operating margins were 6% and in line with our medium-term targets. Return on capital employed was again very strong at 29%, highlighting the high return, capital-light nature of our business. Free cash flow delivery was a highlight as we produced GBP 315 million with a stronger performance in the second half and this was 104% free cash flow to adjusted profit after tax conversion rate and in line with our medium-term targets.

Closing leverage was 0.4x, down from the 0.6x at the half year, and well within our self-mandated headroom of 1x. Adjusted basic EPS was GBP 80.8p, up 13%, predominantly as a result of a lower share count from our share buybacks. And today, we declared a final dividend per share of GBP 22.8p taking the total dividend per share for the year to GBP 32.3p up 13% from the prior year.

So in summary, our performance in 2025 was a reflection of our continued operational delivery and progress against Accelerate+, which ensured we continued to deliver value for shareholders. 2025 was a year of 2 halves, and as expected. And as we highlighted during the course of 2025, our second half performance was much stronger than the first half, supported by a wide range of product launches across our business.

And as a result, we saw stronger half 2 growth rates across our regions, supported by product launches. And subsequently, our volumes and revenues swung from negative growth in half 1 to positive growth in half 2, helping to drive profits and cash flow in the second half. And for the year, we delivered organic volume growth of 3%, outperforming the market, which grew by 2%. And as a reminder, we have published our usual market tracker today, which shows the key market trends.

Now let's look at each of the regions, starting with the Americas. We built positive momentum in the region during 2025, supported by improving market conditions, our excellent performance and our growth profile in the region highlights the success of our acquisition of Derco in 2022, as well as the other historic acquisitions and contract wins in the region. These transactions have helped us to build scale and market share and as key markets have turned to growth, we have similarly seen a stronger performance.

Market volumes and organic revenue were both up 8%, with growth from our core brands, offsetting the impact of the brands we exited in 2024, and this ensured we achieved stable market share across the region. There was a strong performance in our scale markets, including Chile, Colombia and Peru, offsetting the weakness in certain markets like Costa Rica.

Operating margins were up 70 basis points to 7%, and this reflected resilient gross margins and operating leverage from higher volumes. In addition, we continue to efficiently scale our business through cost discipline and capital recycling with an GBP 8 million contribution to profits from nonCore asset divestments. And for 2026, we expect the market environment to remain supportive with the typical seasonal weighting towards the second half result in a profitable growth for the year.

In APAC, our market volumes, which were down 1%, our organic revenue declined 12%. As expected, our second half performance was an improvement on the first half as a result of product launches. In Australia, our largest business in the region, it is increasingly competitive, and our business remained resilient, supported by our growing and diversified brand portfolio. However, we underperformed in our Asian markets. with a proliferation of Chinese brands increasing the competitive intensity, particularly in markets where BEV penetration is high.

And additionally, in some markets, the premium segment remained weak. And as a result of lower revenues, operating margins contracted by 60 basis points to 7.2% despite a GBP 9 million contribution to profits from non-core asset divestments in half 2. Actions were instigated during the year to protect margins, including our enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners on product positioning. We also initiated a cost reduction program focus on the regional headquarters and certain underperforming Asian markets to ensure we are more agile in a fast-moving and dynamic environment.

For 2026, Australia is expected to remain stable, but challenges in other markets in the region are expected to continue. We expect operating margins this year to be supported through the ongoing implementation of the management actions I mentioned. And additionally, production disruption is expected to impact certain APAC markets in half 1. This disruption relates to production reconfiguration by some of our OEMs, which will have a short-term impact on supply. On to Europe and Africa, where we again delivered well and outperformed in a growing market.

Market volumes were up 3%, with our organic revenue growth ahead of the market at 6%, supported by a contribution from distribution contracts won in recent years. And as Duncan mentioned earlier, BYD continues to in-source automotive distribution in medium to large scale markets in Europe. We have a contract with them in Belgium and Luxembourg, which contributed less than 5% of regional revenue and around 1/3 of our 6% regional organic growth.

At a group level, this contract represents less than 2% of group revenue and less than 1% of group adjusted PBT.

So it's a financially immaterial contract in the context of the group and the region. And while we have performed well for BYD in Belux since our appointment in '22, given the commercial approach in medium to large scale markets in Europe, we do not anticipate that this contract will be renewed. It expires in Q3 '27.

Our role in the value chain is a critical part of our OEMs access markets where we specialize. And as Duncan mentioned, we are not seeing other similar moves by other OEMs. Now back to my regional review of Europe and Africa. Our acquisition in Iceland is performing well, and there was a particularly strong performance across our business in Southern Europe, supported by good consumer take-up of a range of hybrid products and strong growth in the market. Africa continued to grow through distribution contract expansion.

Operating margins were down 10 basis points to 4.6%, but in line with historical norms, with gross margin resilience and operating leverage from scale offsetting the initial dilution from immature distribution contracts. During 2026, growth rates are set to slow in certain markets, which will be partly offset by the full contribution of Iceland as well as continued operational execution and momentum across the region and the growing contribution from the multiple contracts won in recent years.

And on to our financial performance, and this slide shows our income statement. We delivered adjusted operating profit for the year of GBP 563 million, down 1% in constant currency. Regional mix impacted gross margins, but this was largely offset by the continued cost discipline, where our overhead to revenue ratio fell by 20 basis points. Adjusted net finance cost decreased by GBP 19 million to GBP 123 million, driven by lower average net debt and a more favorable interest rate environment.

Adjusting items amounted to an expense of GBP 37 million, and this was primarily driven by one-off costs relating to acquisition and integration of GBP 10 million. mainly in relation to the final stages of the Derco integration. And there were also restructuring costs of GBP 23 million, broadly split evenly between the cost reduction actions that I mentioned earlier, and the continuation of our back office restructure following the U.K. disposal.

And adjusted PBT was GBP 443 million, 3% higher on a constant currency basis and the effective tax rate was flat to 31.4%. Adjusted basic EPS was up 13% to 80.8p and up 17% in constant currency, so well ahead of our medium-term target. And this was supported by a reduced number of shares in issue as a result of the share buyback programs executed during the year and the effect of averaging from the buyback program in 2024.

Now this slide shows our net debt bridge. Inchcape has a strong balance sheet supported by consistently strong free cash flow generation, which ensures we can execute a disciplined approach to capital allocation. having generated over GBP 300 million in free cash flow. Dividend payments amounted to GBP 101 million, and share buybacks amounted to GBP 238 million as we executed our capital allocation policy.

There was net M&A spend of GBP 29 million, including the GBP 35 million in cash invested in the Iceland deal. And the net of these elements saw leverage fall to 0.6x EBITDA down from the 0.6x seen at the half year, providing the group with capacity to continue to allocate capital to drive growth and shareholder value, which brings me to our capital allocation approach, which remains disciplined and returns based.

We will continue to pay dividends at 40% of earnings. We will continue to act with discipline in the balance of capital allocation between the value accretion from share buybacks and value-accretive acquisitions whilst running leverage below 1x EBITDA. And having completed the Iceland deal last year, we will continue to activate our healthy pipeline of bolt-on acquisitions, acting with discipline on valuations.

We see merit and strategic value in expanding the scale of the group. However, a large deal is not currently in our consideration set in the near term. And since August 2024, we have repurchased GBP 400 million in shares through our share buyback program, reducing our shares in issue by around 13%. And today, we are announcing a new share buyback program of GBP 175 million, which is expected to complete over the next 12 months.

And it is worth noting that if the 2025 buyback program, where we repurchased 9% of our equity, only around half of this has been recognized in EPS with the effect of averaging, and this will provide a tailwind to EPS for 2026 of around 4% to 5%. Our capital allocation policy will help to drive EPS growth and deliver further value for shareholders, whilst retaining the capacity to expand through acquisitions.

So to sum up my section here is a reminder of our medium-term targets, which we are reiterating today. To the end of 2030, we expect to generate GBP 2.5 billion in free cash flow. We will deploy this free cash flow to drive shareholder value with a consistent dividend policy and in excess of 10% compound growth in EPS. So that's it for me. I'll now hand back to Duncan.

Thanks, Adrian. So I wanted to give you a midterm review of how we have transformed Inchcape's investment proposition over the last 6 years, driving growth and value for shareholders. Over that period, we have become a pure-play automotive distribution business, divesting of a number of retail-only assets and ensuring our business is more resilient, higher margin and generating better returns and more cash.

Over decades, we have built an unrivaled diversified portfolio of global OEM partners, winning over 50 contracts with a range of the world's best manufacturers since 2019. As a distributor, our powerful commercial relationships with these partners operate across global, regional and local levels. We have continued to deliver a strong performance for them, supported by our differentiated data-driven approach, nearly doubling our distribution revenues.

We've also delivered a 200 basis point improvement in our operating margins from 4% in 2019 to 6% today, increasing return on capital employed over that period from 22% to 29%. Driven by this growth and strategic focus, we've generated GBP 2.3 billion in total free cash flow and raised around GBP 900 million in cash from the divestment of non-core retail-only assets. This has enabled us to return GBP 1.3 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, while we continue to invest in value-accretive acquisitions EPS grew 35% over the period.

And I hope that by reinforcing our track record of delivery, this gives you a sense of what we expect to deliver in the coming years as a capital-light automotive distribution pure play. We have a compelling capital allocation policy and clear medium-term operation and financial ambitions, which we are very confident of delivering against. And to that end, as a management team, we're extremely excited about the future for Inchcape.

Now this is a reminder of our Accelerate+ strategic framework and that enabled our performance as we continue to scale and optimize our business. And we will continue to deliver against our medium-term ambitions, supported by our strategic enablers outlined here.

So finally from me today, onto the outlook for 2026. We expect to deliver a year of growth at constant currency, in line with our medium-term guidance. This will be achieved by the delivery of organic volume growth towards the lower end of our 3% to 5% guidance range, supported by contract wins. We expect continued momentum in the Americas and Europe and Africa regions, while we are decisively addressing the challenges in APAC. We expect to deliver resilient operating margins of circa 6% this year, in line with our medium-term guidance, supported by further penetration in after sales and finance insurance, enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners and our actions on cost reduction.

We also expect to deliver free cash flow conversion of circa 100% and EPS growth of more than 10%. Our performance this year will be skewed to the second half due to usual seasonality in the Americas and supply chain phasing in APAC. We also reiterate our medium-term targets, which will be delivered through our highly cash generative and capital-light business model and a disciplined approach to capital allocation to deliver greater than 10% EPS CAGR to the end of 2030.

So just to sum up, Inchcape delivered a strong 2025 performance, reaffirming the strength of our diversified and scaled business as we continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy. We expect to deliver another year of growth in 2026, and our confidence about our prospects for the year is underlined by our new GBP 175 million share buyback program.

Great. Well, let's take your questions. Thanks very much all the questions so far. And for those of you who want to ask a question, you just can just type it in the Q&A box on the top hand right of your screen.

First question is around AI. I think this is for you, Duncan. Can you just talk a little bit about how we're using AI within the business? And do we see it as a threat or opportunity?

Very good. Thank you, Rob. So we use AI in 2 ways. We've been using machine learning for some time and machine learning issues right throughout the business to price parts. So we have tens of thousands of parts in our markets, which AI is pricing for us. AI is also helping us with a machine learning sense to determine what part holding will have in a country and what vehicle volume we should request from OEMs to serve demand in a particular market.

Now if I talk then about GenAI. So we're using GenAI in a number of ways. It produces a lot of our marketing material in places like the Americas, we're using GenAI in certain places to engage with customers around service booking and which models people might be interested in. And we are also using it in our functions across the business such as legal. Now in terms of is it an opportunity or a threat, I think for us, Rob, it's an opportunity to continue to improve customer satisfaction improve the way we work with our OEM partners and the way we deliver our financial results.

Right. Quite a few questions on capital allocation, Adrian, particularly on the buyback. I'll try to aggregate them as much as possible, but can you discuss around the buyback? How do you think about it in terms of valuation share price? How do you think about it in terms of paying down debt and if the share price stays at the same level this time next year, what would be your thinking around buybacks?

Thank you very much. Robin, thank you for the question. A lot to unpack there. So if I look back on last year's share buyback, which -- as most of you will all know, it was around GBP 250 million. We bought -- we deployed around GBP 238 million of that within 2025 specifically. And over the program, we bought back 9% of our equity, and that takes us to about 13% of our equity since August 2024.

I think I look back on that overall program as an excellent use of capital for shareholders. It provides a good return. And we think in the low to mid-teens from a post-tax return on invested capital or a PRR for our investors. And so it's a good use of cash. If I think about where it sits against leverage, we started the year at 0.3x for 2025. It went up a little bit about half year to 0.6x and then came back down to around 0.4x. So the balance sheet is in good shape at only 0.4x leverage. We have capacity to continue to invest.

And then I think about the GBP 175 million buyback that we have announced for 2026. Think about it in the context of the free cash we're going to generate. We start the year having generated GBP 315 million of free cash flow last year. We have continued to guide consistently as we have done in our medium-term guidance, profit after tax to cash at 100%. And so a similar, if not slightly larger number for 2026, dividend flows, we expect to be about GBP 110 million. After GBP 175 million, the balance sheet retains its capacity to invest in inorganic growth through acquisitions, which is consistent with our -- with our capital allocation policy.

And really, as I said in the video on last Tuesday, this is a returns-based equation. We look for optimum use of shareholders' funds. We are very pleased with that Askja acquisition in Iceland in '25. We think the pipeline is healthy for 2026, but we'll continue to be disciplined. And then longer term, I'd point you back to our medium-term guidance. Free cash flow at 100% of profit after tax. We'll continue to pay 40% of EPS and dividend flows and we'll continue to deploy the balance in either share buybacks or acquisitions based on whichever is the best returning -- return for our shareholders.

Thanks, Adrian. And on a follow-up, and maybe this is for both of you actually, on M&A, can you just talk a little bit about the pipeline and the prospects for deals in the next 12 months?

Sure. Do you want me to go first?

Go for it.

So as we said last Tuesday, the APAC team have got some work to do, but we can have a healthy pipeline across our Europe and Africa business and our Americas very much shifted to bolt-ons, we saw value in the Iceland acquisition to Adrian's point relative to share buyback returns. So if we see value for M&A with the right OEMs in the right country, subject to where our share price is, then it would make sense to activate our pipeline.

Yes. Just from a geography perspective, focus more in Europe and Africa, focused more in Latin America. And Asia Pac, we're focused more on operational execution in the near term. And so that's the area of focus for the pipeline.

A couple of questions on Chinese manufacturers. Firstly, is the BYD in sourcing? Is that something that we could see from other players? First question.

Second question is around oversupply from Chinese OEMs and how that's impacting our markets and could it impact it even further going forward?

And the third question is, do we see any opportunities with Chinese OEMs going forward?

Right. So 3 questions. Keep me honest, Rob, but I do answer questions. So do we see Chinese OEMs as an opportunity or a threat? I see them as an opportunity for our business. We've won over 50 contracts in the last few years. 70% or more have been with Chinese OEMs. And I think we'll continue to get some contract wins for the business over time, Rob. And then we've been a big part of Chinese OEM growth, particularly post the Derco acquisition we made in Latin America which gave us 20-year-plus relationships with OEMs.

So your BYD point, look, we don't see our other Chinese OEMs, bringing back in-house distribution contracts. And I'll go back to what I just said about contract wins, the majority of those contract wins with Chinese OEMs that we have a relationship with. Remind me about the last question.

The oversupply and the impact on our markets.

Yes, sure. So there has been a pretty aggressive expansion by Chinese OEMs overseas. But it's also clear at the same time that the China market itself has been very difficult for Chinese OEMs in terms of their ability to make money and their dealer networks. And when I'm talking to Chinese OEMs, they are talking about making sure they don't replicate that outside of China, losing money in China and then outside would not be a good blend.

Now in terms of oversupply, I go back to what I said about AI, we are absolutely using our sales and operations planning processes and AI to make sure that we land the right amount of stock into a market. You don't have excess inventory. Now we can't legislate for what others do, but I guarantee you we will look after our own inventory levels in markets because that's good for margins.

Very good. Thank you, Duncan. Next question is around the current global environment. And given the uncertainty and the volatility, if the car market went into a downturn tomorrow, how resilient would Inchcape be?

You could answer this.

Yes. Okay. Yes, very happy to. I mean, if you stand back and look at the car market that we operate in, the global market is about 90 million cars. The majority of those cars are sold through the large markets of the world, such as the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K. and these sort of -- and China and these very scaled markets where Inchcape doesn't necessarily have a role to play for our OEM partners.

Our job is in the markets that we operate in, more complex at times, lower scale in their nature, places like Colombia, places like Chile, Peru, Indonesia, Philippines, Bulgaria, Greece to name but a few. That's a car market. It's only about 11 million cars in the -- in and amongst the 90 million. And naturally, that market sees more volatility. We look at our end markets and we see markets both growing at 20% a year, but also seeing markets that aren't necessarily seeing any growth at all. So we're used to dealing with volatility in our end markets and our business is structured to accommodate for that.

So we have flexibility in how we respond. And if there is a global downturn in the context of the geopolitical environment that we're seeing today, then our business will respond accordingly, we'll flex our cost base will flex our supply and will flex the products we offer it -- offering to our customers to make sure we are most relevant in that particular moment. That's what -- that's our role in the value chain. And that's what we are -- that's why we -- what we are good at doing.

Thanks, Adrian. And a follow-up on FX. How sensitive is the business the currency fluctuations given current global issues and our global footprint?

Yes. So we think about FX in 2 ways, so I'll describe both. Firstly, there's transactional FX on many of our businesses around the world. buy cars in Japanese yen, renminbi, U.S. dollar or euro, the major currencies of the world. And then we sell them in our local currencies, whether it be Colombian peso, Chilean peso, Aussie dollars or euros.

And our business takes hedging positions to eradicate effectively the short-term volatility you see because we're of a view philosophically that structural shifts in FX rates, end up in price, be it good or bad news for pricing for consumers in the end market and consumers in our markets understand that.

From a -- so effectively, that is all margin agnostic. It's built into our cost of operating. And so you shouldn't see any impact on our trading results. From a translation perspective, part of the Inchcape model is that we have businesses around the world, and that means we have profit centers in different currencies, Australian dollar, euro, U.S. dollar, Chilean peso are our major currencies. And we do give a guide on the translation effect of shifts in those against our reporting currency of the pound.

But broadly speaking, a 1% move is the equivalent to a GBP 1 million of translational impact headwind or tailwind. And there is another disclosure in our annual report accounts around those currencies that represent 1% move-up represents around GBP 0.5 million. And we give guidance at the end of every year on the impact of those translational effects on our currency, but it does flow to results, good and bad.

Great. Thank you very much. Another one for you, I think, Adrian, on remuneration incentivization, how invested is the management team and how you remunerated relative to the success of the business?

So I would say that both Duncan and I and the majority of -- and the management team across the group are heavily incentivized around our medium term framework. And you'll note there are a number of components to that medium-term framework, but fundamentally, it's all about driving EPS growth. And some of the changes we've made in recent years are very consistent with that where we have EPS as the lead indicator.

We also have free cash flow and return on capital employed, but EPS is the predominant majority of our incentive program. More recently, you'll see some changes that are coming where we'll introduce the TSR measure, which will closer align Duncan and I and the management team's experience with that of shareholders and that's going forward in April for a vote at the AGM and has been consulted through our RemCo Chair with -- directly with some of our shareholders. So I would say, very highly incentivized, very well aligned to our medium-term targets and fully invested.

A couple of questions on EVs. Do you see EV as an opportunity or a threat in the business? And then what are the different rates of EV rollout in the various regions and markets. Maybe that's one for you, Duncan.

And then in terms of profitability of EVs, are they more or less profitable for distributors compared to ICE vehicles?

Look, what's very clear is the pace of move a market move to EV is different by market. You see some of our markets with less than 1% EV penetration. You see other markets with 86% penetration with EV. Each moves at a different pace. It's our role to make sure we have a portfolio of brands that is able to move at the pace that the market moves to a lower carbon future. It means we have to have hybrid products and EV products from our OEM partners in each of those markets. So I don't see it necessarily as a threat. We need to make sure that we are moving at the right pace, and it's large about OEM portfolio end markets. .

And profitability. Look, our role is to provide our OEMs with a route to market, whether it be for ICE cars, hybrid cars or EV cars. And our approach with that is very consistent with -- as we brought in different products. So from a margin perspective on vehicles, it's largely agnostic. We are agnostic to those aspects.

You tend to find EVs have a slightly higher selling price, but from a percentage perspective, is very consistent. From an aftersales perspective, it's a very important part of our value chain and value equation. There's a few offsets. I think naturally, the amount of gross profit available in the near term on EVs is a bit lower with fewer moving parts. But we expect EVs to stay in the value chain effectively for a longer period of time due to the complexity of them. And those 2 things will offset against each other.

But that dynamic has quite a long way to play out given that only 4% of our sales are EVs.

A couple of more questions. One on medium-term guidance. What's the biggest risk to achieving the 3% to 5% volume growth -- top line growth over the coming years?

Sure. So the 3% to 5% volume growth is made up of 2 components. One, there is market momentum. We think our markets in aggregate will grow between 1% to 2% on a compound basis. That's going to be a mixture of plus 10s and 20s and minus 10s and 20s because we know all of our markets are volatile. And then because of the contracts we've been running, and we've won over 50 of them in the last 3 or 4 years, we would anticipate our market -- our business to outperform as we did last year when our volumes grew 3% in a market that grew 2%.

In terms of risks to that, I think, look, the market -- the big component of our growth is going to be the market and how that moves and whilst we accept there's volatility, we also do expect with our markets being typically seeing higher GDP growth environment and lower motorization rates, we do expect them over the longer term to be -- to grow -- and so I would say the biggest risks that is we don't see that growth in our markets and in our broad footprint.

But ultimately, this is a diversified business. We've got presence in over 40 markets with an appetite for organic growth and the potential for us to inorganic growth, I should say, and the potential to expand the footprint to create diversification, which will create that sort of growth driver that underpins that 3% to 5% volume growth.

And a couple of more final questions. The share pricing is relatively cheap compared to the cash generated by the business. What do you think the market is discounting or missing in Inchcape?

Look, there's a little bit of uncertainty about global autos, Rob, maybe a little bit about certain emerging markets. Look, fundamentally, if we look inside our company, the midterm targets we put in place in March of last year, so we're going to grow EPS by better than 10% per annum. We have to continue to put scores on the doors.

We've delivered year 1 of our Accelerate+ targets. Adrian and I and the team have to come back and do exactly the same in 2026 and '27 and '28 just to reinforce what a great investment proposition this company is. And the reason I say that is, of course, we did see EPS come down a little bit in '24 before it went back up. We have to consistently knock the ball out the park on EPS growth.

Great. And final question. 10 contracts won last year. What's the outlook for contracts going forward when you've got new distribution contracts?

So look, a few things. We have won an awful lot of contracts over the last years. A lot of it, of course, with Chinese OEMs as they have moved out of China pretty aggressively. I think the bulk of those contracts, we've gone through that contracting period. But generally, I'd like us to win high single-digit numbers of contracts each year depending on where we are, but it will be a bit lumpy, Rob. So don't expect us to be winning just under 1 per month to give us our around 10% or so per annum, they are a bit lumpy.

Very good. That was all the questions. Duncan, I don't know if you wanted to sum up for 30 seconds.

Very good. Thanks, Rob. Thank you, Adrian. So we had a good 2025. We delivered EPS growth of 13%. Business, we have good momentum in Europe and Africa, good momentum in the Americas. We've got all sorts of good things going on in APAC to get that business back to where we want it to be, and our objective is to grow EPS by greater than 10% in '26. Thank you.

Thank you.

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

Well, good morning, everyone. I'm Duncan Tait, Group CEO, and I'm joined by our Group CFO, Adrian Lewis.

Here today's agenda. I'll give an update and overview on market context. Adrian will then run through 2025 results, and I'll sum up and discuss the outlook for 2026. Today's presentation is available on our website, and a recording of today's session will be available later today. After the presentation concludes, we'll take your questions.

So let's begin. Inchcape delivered a strong 2025 performance against the backdrop of tariff-related disruption and economic uncertainty, reaffirming the strength of our diversified and scaled business. Our colleagues in the Americas and the Europe and Africa regions posted record PBT performances. Against a number of challenges, APAC delivered a better H2 performance, and we're working with our OEM partners and across the value chain to drive further performance improvements.

We continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy, winning more distribution contracts and executing an acquisition in a new market for Inchcape. During the year, we returned around GBP 340 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, grew EPS and DPS by 13%. And with leverage of just 0.4x, we're ready to go again in 2026, starting with a new share buyback program of GBP 175 million.

Now, this slide shows how we delivered against all of our key growth drivers on the left-hand side of this chart. That includes the financial metrics I mentioned, including our resilient margins as well as vehicle volumes, customer and colleague-related metrics. And on those dynamics, we continue to build on our strong customer reputation in the industry, with a 6% increase in our scores on reputation.com. In addition, our employee engagement score of 81%, up 4 points from the previous year is a clear signal of Inchcape's collaborative, entrepreneurial and high-performance culture, which is a testament to the caliber and talent of our 16,000 people across our 40 markets.

Last year, we generated GBP 315 million in free cash flow, which clearly highlights our cash generative and capital-light model. This capital was deployed to drive growth and shareholder returns, with a 13% increase in dividends per share, GBP 238 million invested in share buybacks and GBP 35 million utilized on the Iceland acquisition. And we have a healthy pipeline of bolt-on M&A opportunities in place to supplement our organic growth. This delivery of our strategy enabled us to deliver return on capital employed of 29% and helped us grow EPS by 13%. And we continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy by scaling and optimizing our regions.

Our objective here is to develop our OEM partner portfolio and geographic footprint, thereby enhancing the resilience in our earnings profile. And this will help to drive our progress against our ambition to achieve 10% market share across our markets. Last year, we grew distribution contracts won in previous years, with these contracts being a key driver of our organic revenue growth. We're also awarded 10 new distribution contracts with existing OEM brands, including New Holland in Ethiopia and Kenya, BYD in Lithuania and Latvia, XPENG in Colombia and GAC AION in Greece as well as new partners, smart in Colombia, Uruguay and Ecuador and Iveco in Hong Kong.

To drive operational execution, we continue to optimize our business in a number of ways. Firstly, we further rationalized our brand portfolio, mutually exiting 4 immaterial contracts with Komatsu in Ethiopia and 3 Geely contracts in smaller markets in the Americas. In addition, we continue to recycle capital by divesting non-core assets, and we grew our third-party retail network, enabling broader in-market coverage in a capital-efficient way. We continue to drive the penetration of value-added services, in particular, growing our distribution of relatively high-margin OEM certified parts as well as delivering and developing financed insurance products by utilizing our global scale and partnerships.

We also optimized our business by further collaborating with our OEM partners on product and inventory management, supported by our consistent execution and differentiated technology-based sales and operation planning processes. To that end, we positioned ourselves well for the second half of the year from a stock perspective, successfully reducing the build-up of inventory in the first half, with inventory cover at the end of 2025 remaining flat year-on-year.

Our sales and operational planning processes are supported by AI in a number of areas. In our parts business, we run pricing, optimization and demand models, which enable us to trade tens of thousands of parts at optimal price points. We're also leveraging AI to drive innovation across our business. For example, we recently launched a vehicle pricing algorithm in Chile, which analyzes price to volume elasticity to ensure we price vehicles even more accurately.

Back to our optimization activities, we've also taken decisive action on our cost base, reinforcing our devolved operating model, driving efficiencies and tackling challenges in certain markets. To that end, during the year, we initiated a cost reduction program across the group, with a particular focus on the APAC region.

Next, I want to discuss our diversified and scaled OEM portfolio. We have long-standing relationships with many OEMs, some of which go back for over 50 years. Our role in the automotive distribution value chain is more important than ever. We continue to support these manufacturers in an increasingly complex and fast-moving environment, growing their volumes and market share in existing markets and helping them to enter new markets.

We also have some relatively new OEMs in our portfolio on the right-hand side of this slide, who we've worked with for just a few years. Of those, I wanted to highlight that we are seeing BYD continuing to in-source distribution in medium to large-scale markets in Europe. This is a BYD-only dynamic, and we are seeing our other OEM partners rely on Inchcape more than ever before.

On the next slide, here's some market context in what was a transforming automotive industry in 2025. In general terms, the new energy vehicle transition is becoming more of a multi-powertrain story. Importantly, as a powertrain-agnostic business and with our deep specialist market knowledge, Inchcape is well positioned to support our OEMs in their individual new energy transition journeys. Overall, market volumes across our markets grew by 2% in 2025, with the indirect impact of tariff-related disruption affecting demand in our markets in the first half of the year.

Inchcape outperformed the market, growing our volumes by 3%. The macro environment improved in the second half in a number of our markets, particularly in the Americas and the Europe and Africa regions, offsetting a challenging backdrop in Asia. In the Americas, market volumes were up 8%, with a multi-drivetrain approach playing out. In Chile, our largest market there, there was a 3% TIV growth during the year with a stable market environment. Colombia and Peru experienced strong market growth, while there was a weaker growth in some markets like Costa Rica.

In Europe, another multi-drivetrain story. Southern European markets like Greece and Bulgaria remained strong, while there was weakness in certain Northern European markets like Finland and Estonia. In APAC, BEV adoption continued to accelerate, partly as a result of the successful rollout of BEV in Asian markets. Chinese brands have grown market share across the region in recent years. These dynamics have created a highly competitive environment in most markets in the region. In addition, the premium segment in APAC remains weak, with consumers in that market segment continuing to hold off on buying higher-value vehicles. To date, we've not seen any similar weaknesses in the premium segment in our other regions.

Finally, on APAC, Australia, one of the largest vehicle markets in which we operate, remains resilient, but it is an increasingly competitive environment. That's it from me for now.

I'll hand over to Adrian.

Thank you, Duncan, and good morning, everyone.

I'll take you through our results for 2025. We generated revenues of GBP 9.1 billion, with organic revenue growth of 1% and resilient operating margins of 6.2%. Distribution contract wins were the significant portion of growth during the year. Adjusted PBT was GBP 443 million, up 3% in constant currency. And our PBT performance was supported by a contribution of GBP 17 million from the gains arising from the divestment of non-core assets, while translational currency headwinds were approximately GBP 19 million.

Excluding the disposal gains, our operating margins were 6% and in line with our medium-term targets. Return on capital employed was again very strong at 29%, highlighting the high-return, capital-light nature of our business. Free cash flow delivery was a highlight as we produced GBP 315 million with a stronger performance in the second half, and this was 104% free cash flow to adjusted profit after tax conversion rate and in line with our medium-term targets.

Closing leverage was 0.4x, down from the 0.6 at the half year and well within our self-mandated headroom of 1x. Adjusted basic EPS was 80.8p, up 13%, predominantly as a result of a lower share count from our share buybacks. And today, we declared a final dividend per share of 22.8p, taking the total dividend per share for the year to 32.3p, up 13% from the prior year. So in summary, our performance in 2025 was a reflection of our continued operational delivery and progress against Accelerate+, which ensured we continued to deliver value for shareholders.

2025 was a year of 2 halves and as expected, and as we highlighted during the course of 2025, our second half performance was much stronger than the first half, supported by a wide range of product launches across our business. And as a result, we saw stronger half 2 growth rates across our regions, supported by product launches. And subsequently, our volumes and revenue swung from negative growth in half 1 to positive growth in half 2, helping to drive profits and cash flow in the second half. And for the year, we delivered organic volume growth of 3%, outperforming the market, which grew by 2%. And as a reminder, we have published our usual market tracker today, which shows the key market trends.

Now let's look at each of the regions, starting with the Americas. We built positive momentum in the region during 2025, supported by improving market conditions, our excellent performance and our growth profile in the region highlights the success of our acquisition of Derco in 2022, as well as the other historic acquisitions and contract wins in the region. These transactions have helped us to build scale and market share. And as key markets have turned to growth, we have similarly seen a stronger performance.

Market volumes and organic revenue were both up 8%, with growth from our core brands offsetting the impact of the brands we exited in 2024, and this ensured we achieved stable market share across the region. There was a strong performance in our scaled markets, including Chile, Colombia and Peru, offsetting the weakness in certain markets like Costa Rica. Operating margins were up 70 basis points to 7%, and this reflected resilient gross margins and operating leverage from higher volumes.

In addition, we continued to efficiently scale our business through cost discipline and capital recycling, with an GBP 8 million contribution to profits from non-core asset divestments. And for 2026, we expect the market environment to remain supportive, with a typical seasonal weighting towards the second half, resulting in a profitable growth for the year. In APAC, our market volumes, which were down 1%, our organic revenue declined 12%. As expected, our second half performance was an improvement on the first half as a result of product launches.

In Australia, our largest business in the region, it is increasingly competitive and our business remained resilient, supported by our growing and diversified brand portfolio. However, we underperformed in our Asian markets, with a proliferation of Chinese brands increasing the competitive intensity, particularly in markets where BEV penetration is high. And additionally, in some markets, the premium segment remained weak. And as a result of lower revenues, operating margins contracted by 60 basis points to 7.2%, despite a GBP 9 million contribution to profits from non-core asset divestments in half 2.

Actions were instigated during the year to protect margins, including our enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners on product positioning. We also initiated a cost reduction program focused on the regional headquarters and certain underperforming Asian markets to ensure we are more agile in a fast-moving and dynamic environment.

For 2026, Australia is expected to remain stable, but challenges in other markets in the region are expected to continue. We expect operating margins this year to be supported through the ongoing implementation of the management actions I mentioned. And additionally, production disruption is expected to impact certain APAC markets in half 1. This disruption relates to production reconfiguration by some of our OEMs, which will have a short-term impact on supply.

On to Europe and Africa, where we again delivered well and outperformed in a growing market. Market volumes were up 3%, with our organic revenue growth ahead of the market at 6%, supported by a contribution from distribution contracts won in recent years. And as Duncan mentioned earlier, BYD continues to in-source automotive distribution in medium to large-scale markets in Europe. We have a contract with them in Belgium and Luxembourg, which contributed less than 5% of regional revenue and around 1/3 of our 6% regional organic growth.

At a group level, this contract represents less than 2% of group revenue and less than 1% of group adjusted PBT. So it's a financially immaterial contract in the context of the group and the region. And while we have performed well for BYD in Belux since our appointment in '22, given the commercial approach in medium- to large-scale markets in Europe, we do not anticipate that this contract will be renewed. It expires in Q3 '27. Our role in the value chain is a critical part of how OEMs access markets where we specialize. And as Duncan mentioned, we are not seeing other similar moves by other OEMs.

Now back to my regional review of Europe and Africa. Our acquisition in Iceland is performing well, and there was a particularly strong performance across our business in Southern Europe, supported by good consumer take-up of a range of hybrid products and strong growth in the market. Africa continued to grow through distribution contract expansion.

Operating margins were down 10 basis points to 4.6%, but in line with historical norms with gross margin resilience and operating leverage from scale offsetting the initial dilution from immature distribution contracts. During 2026, growth rates are set to slow in certain markets, which will be partly offset by the full contribution of Iceland as well as continued operational execution and momentum across the region and the growing contribution from the multiple contracts won in recent years.

And on to our financial performance, and this slide shows our income statement. We delivered adjusted operating profit for the year of GBP 563 million, down 1% in constant currency. Regional mix impacted gross margins, but this was largely offset by the continued cost discipline where our overhead to revenue ratio fell by 20 basis points. Adjusted net finance costs decreased by GBP 19 million to GBP 123 million, driven by lower average net debt and a more favorable interest rate environment.

Adjusting items amounted to an expense of GBP 37 million, and this was primarily driven by one-off costs relating to acquisition and integration of GBP 10 million, mainly in relation to the final stages of the Derco integration. And there were also restructuring costs of GBP 23 million, broadly split evenly between the cost reduction actions that I mentioned earlier and the continuation of our back office restructure following the U.K. disposal. And adjusted PBT was GBP 443 million, 3% higher on a constant currency basis. And the effective tax rate was flat at 31.4%.

Adjusted basic EPS was up 13% to 80.8p and up 17% in constant currency, so well ahead of our medium-term target. And this was supported by a reduced number of shares in issue as a result of the share buyback programs executed during the year and the effect of averaging from the buyback program in 2024.

Now, this slide shows our net debt bridge. Inchcape has a strong balance sheet supported by consistently strong free cash flow generation, which ensures we can execute a disciplined approach to capital allocation. Having generated over GBP 300 million in free cash flow, dividend payments amounted to GBP 101 million and share buybacks amounted to GBP 238 million as we executed our capital allocation policy.

There was net M&A spend of GBP 29 million, including the GBP 35 million in cash invested in the Iceland deal. And the net of these elements saw leverage fall to 0.6x EBITDA, down from the 0.6 seen at the half year, providing the group with capacity to continue to allocate capital to drive growth and shareholder value, which brings me to our capital allocation approach, which remains disciplined and returns based.

We will continue to pay dividends at 40% of earnings. We will continue to act with discipline in the balance of capital allocation between the value accretion from share buybacks and value-accretive acquisitions whilst running leverage below 1x EBITDA. And having completed the Iceland deal last year, we will continue to activate our healthy pipeline of bolt-on acquisitions, acting with discipline on valuations.

We see merit and strategic value in expanding the scale of the group. However, a large deal is not currently in our consideration set in the near term. And since August 2024, we have repurchased GBP 400 million in shares through our share buyback program, reducing our shares in issue by around 13%. And today, we are announcing a new share buyback program of GBP 175 million, which is expected to complete over the next 12 months. And it is worth noting that of the 2025 buyback program, where we repurchased 9% of our equity, only around half of this has been recognized in EPS, with the effect of averaging and this will provide a tailwind to EPS for 2026 of around 4% to 5%. Our capital allocation policy will help to drive EPS growth and deliver further value for shareholders, whilst retaining the capacity to expand through acquisitions.

So to sum up my section, here is a reminder of our medium-term targets, which we are reiterating today. To the end of 2030, we expect to generate GBP 2.5 billion in free cash flow. We will deploy this free cash flow to drive shareholder value with a consistent dividend policy and in excess of 10% compound growth in EPS.

So that's it from me. I'll now hand back to Duncan.

Thanks, Adrian.

So, I wanted to give you a mid-term review of how we have transformed Inchcape's investment proposition over the last 6 years, driving growth and value for shareholders. Over that period, we have become a pure-play automotive distribution business, divesting of a number of retail-only assets and ensuring our business is more resilient higher margin and generating better returns on more cash.

Over decades, we have built an unrivaled diversified portfolio of global OEM partners, winning over 50 contracts with a range of the world's best manufacturers since 2019. As a distributor, our powerful commercial relationships with these partners operate across global, regional and local levels. We have continued to deliver a strong performance for them, supported by our differentiated data-driven approach, nearly doubling our distribution revenues.

We've also delivered a 200 basis point improvement in our operating margins from 4% in 2019 to 6% today, increasing return on capital employed over that period from 22% to 29% Driven by this growth and strategic focus, we've generated GBP 2.3 billion in total free cash flow and raised around GBP 900 million in cash from the divestment of non-core retail-only assets. This has enabled us to return GBP 1.3 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, while we continue to invest in value-accretive acquisitions.

EPS grew 35% over the period. And I hope that by reinforcing our track record of delivery, this gives you a sense of what we expect to deliver in the coming years as a capital-light automotive distribution pure play. We have a compelling capital allocation policy and clear medium-term operational and financial ambitions, which we are very confident of delivering against. And to that end, as a management team, we're extremely excited about the future for Inchcape.

Now, this is a reminder of our Accelerate+ strategic framework, and that's enabled our performance as we continue to scale and optimize our business. And we will continue to deliver against our medium-term ambitions, supported by our strategic enablers outlined here.

So finally, for me today, on to the outlook for 2026. We expect to deliver a year of growth at constant currency, in line with our medium-term guidance. This will be achieved by the delivery of organic volume growth towards the lower end of our 3% to 5% guidance range, supported by contract wins. We expect continued momentum in the Americas and Europe and Africa regions, while we are decisively addressing the challenges in APAC.

We expect to deliver resilient operating margins of circa 6% this year, in line with our medium-term guidance, supported by further penetration in aftersales and finance insurance, enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners and our actions on cost reduction. We also expect to deliver free cash flow conversion of circa 100% and EPS growth of more than 10%.

Our performance this year will be skewed to the second half due to usual seasonality in the Americas and supply chain phasing in APAC. We also reiterate our medium-term targets, which will be delivered through our highly cash generative and capital-light business model and a disciplined approach to capital allocation to deliver greater than 10% EPS CAGR to the end of 2030.

So just to sum up, Inchcape delivered a strong 2025 performance, reaffirming the strength of our diversified and scaled business as we continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy. We expect to deliver another year of growth in 2026, and our confidence about our prospects for the year is underlined by our new GBP 175 million share buyback program.

So that's it for the presentation. So let's take your questions, firstly, from people here in the room, then the phone lines. And finally, from the webcast via our Head of IR, Rob.

My word, what a popular morning. Dear me. James, can we go to you first, please?

It's James Bayliss from Berenberg. Two, if I may. You referenced you increased your value-added services penetration in the year, and I can see aftersales gross profit was up 4% year-on-year on an underlying basis. How should we be thinking about that profit stream going forward relative to vehicle distribution given everything that's going on in supply chains?

And then my second question. Can you just elaborate on that BYD disintermediation piece in its larger markets? You seem quite reassured that's not a trend that should impact other OEMs in your portfolio. So any comments there?

Very good. I think I'll take these. So look, first of all, in terms of value-added services, it is quite clearly a higher-margin portion of our overall business. And not surprisingly, James, I'd like to grow it. We have a number of initiatives across our finance and insurance business and our parts business to do so. You saw that coming through in 2025, where new vehicle volumes of 3%. Value-added services or aftersales grew at 4%. And to put it simply, I would like us to continue to grow our aftersales business faster than new vehicle volumes. And I think we have the opportunity to do so over time. Don't expect us to be able to pull a lever and immediately see an uptick. We have to do a lot of things across our business to grow that, but I'm confident in the team's ability to execute accordingly.

Now to your point about BYD, look, let's put this in context. We have a brilliant portfolio of long-term relationships with OEM partners. We celebrated 60 years in January of this year, with one of our OEM partners in one of our markets in Europe, 50 years in Guam, Saipan and Brunei with other OEM partners. These are long-term relationships. And we've won over 50 contracts, the majority of which have been through our existing OEM stable, including some of the Chinese OEMs that we've had relationships for over 20 years like Changan and Great Wall.

Now at the same time, it's become really obvious in Europe, hasn't it? The BYD has been in sourcing contracts in medium to large-scale markets, and that describes a story that we envisage in Belux. We're not seeing that with other Chinese OEMs or other OEMs, and the way I feel about it with uncertainty in the world and with the backdrop of EV transition, we're even more powerful for our OEM partners than we have ever been.

Thank you. Let's stick on this side of the room, please.

Andy Grobler from BNP. Just a couple, if I may. Firstly, you talked about Australia getting increasingly competitive. Can you just talk through how that is manifesting? Is it through price or anything else?

And then secondly, a few more contract wins in 2025. Can you just talk us through the tailwinds you're seeing from completed deals into '26?

Yes. Sure. I'll do one and could you do 2, Mr. Lewis. So yes, look, if you think that Australia market, about 1.2 million TIV, so total industry sales last year, about flat on the previous year. We have seen more Chinese OEMs enter the market. If I go back to when I first started at Inchcape, there would have been about 55 OEMs operating in Australia. There's now closer to 80, and they'll all be fighting for share.

I think what you see with our Subaru portfolio, which is we have a unique customer base that values the Subaru value proposition. We've introduced more models in 2025. We'll do so again in 2026. And also at the same time, we've launched the Foton range of trucks or utility vehicles into that market. That product launch has gone really well, and we'll steadily build up that Foton business over the coming years, but we've seen good growth already in January, if I compare it to where we exited 2025, and we've launched Changan's Deepal range of products. So we are well positioned. My intention in our Australia business is to double our market share over time, but let's recognize the market is getting a bit more competitive.

Are you seeing that impact price to any great degree?

So I'm not seeing it impact pricing in the Australian market. Look, we'll continue to do what you'd imagine a brilliant distributor does, which is bringing the right products in, configuring them in a way that gives the right pricing and margins for Inchcape. And we have a team in Australia who can tell you the ins and outs of every segment of TIV growth, how pricing affects volume aspirations. And I think you can see that in the way we've positioned the Foton brand about gaining share in the right way in a way that's profitable for us and our OEM partners, what we continue to do.

And just on your question on contract wins and the tailwind it might provide us with. Look, if you go back to 2025, most of our growth in 2025 came from that contract win performance. And if I take you up to our medium-term guidance, we talk about our markets growing at around 1% to 2% in aggregate. Lots of noise within that, and you see that in our market tracker. And our ability is -- and our contract win performance will help us to outperform the market. That's what you should expect to see us continue to do in 2026.

And if you think about that guidance we've provided around the average contract, 1 to 3 years as we build momentum, figure out how a brand is going to work in a particular market in years 3 and 4 and 5 is when you start to see scale. A lot of the 50-plus contracts that we've won, they're still in years 1 and 2 of their maturity curve. And so, we've got the tailwind of those to come in '26, '27 and '28. But you'll also see us act with commercial diligence.

You've seen us exit 4 immaterial contracts this year where it wasn't commercially viable for us to do so. So we'll continue to see -- to make sure all of our contracts stand up and work -- stand up on their own 2 feet and work for both us and for the OEM partner.

Okay. Can we go to Sanjay next, please?

Sanjay Vidyarthi from Panmure Liberum. A couple from me. First one, can you give a bit more detail in terms of the cost action that you're taking in APAC, exactly the nature of that? And would it be sufficient, do you think, to hold margins stable in the year ahead?

Second question, in Europe, I guess just wanting to understand, it's more of a fragmented market in terms of market shares for you in most markets, I guess, outside of Greece. How are you thinking about kind of building the same kind of operating leverage of the infrastructure that, say, you're starting to do or doing quite nicely in the Americas. It's clearly, I guess, harder to make acquisitions. There's a small number of contract wins, but how should we think about that opportunity?

Okay. So I'll do the cost actions first. So we talked about the cost actions. And around -- if you think about that adjusting item that we posted, around GBP 10 million of the investment we made in adjusting items was related to that cost action. It is both at a regional level and in specific markets where we are trying to get flexibility in our cost base to make sure we can have the right resource structure for the market that we're facing into.

So do I think it will underpin margins? That's exactly what the phrase we've been using. And of course, we've got the property contribution to lap as well. So it's going to help to offset some of that as well. So -- and I would say as well, we're going to continue to make sure we drive flexibility in our cost base and act with commercial diligence around our portfolio of brands that we operate in APAC. So we've got a bit more work to do before we're finished. So you can expect some more in the first half of 2026.

Very good. Thank you, Adrian. So on to Europe and Africa, clearly, we'd like to do what you're suggesting, Sanjay. So -- and look, haven't that Europe and Africa team done a great job over the last few years? 2025, an even better performance as they gained share and delivered record top line and bottom line performance for Inchcape in the region.

And if you look -- you called out Greece, but actually, we've grown market share in the last few years sustainably in Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria and in Belgium. So the team is executing really well. We've won a chunk of contracts in that Europe and Africa region over the last few years with companies like Changan, with BYD, with GAC and with XPENG, and I would hope a few more to come. So getting above that 10% magic number that we refer to in the company, our Europe and Africa team are very much focused on that.

We've also expanded out in certain markets, and I can see the fruits of that going on in Greece, where we've been building a B2B business with small- to medium-sized businesses in Greece. We're doing the same in more markets, which I think will give us an opportunity to further scale. And look, you referenced it might be a bit more difficult to do M&A. Well, we have our Iceland deal, and my challenge to our team is to find some more. But your point about having more and more units and revenue going through an optimal cost base to generate better returns for shareholders, we're very focused on that.

Thank you. I think let's be efficient and hand the mic.

It's David Brockton from Deutsche Bank. Can I ask 2, please?

The first one following up on Sanjay's question in respect of APAC. I fully appreciate the cost actions you're taking. Is there anything that can help to mitigate the pressure from a top line perspective in terms of new models that you could touch on?

And then secondly, you obviously talk about the strategy to further diversify the business from a brand perspective. But equally, you talk about the virtue of rationalizing brands in the Americas for the smaller ones. Is there a minimum level where below that, it is not economic for you to act as a distributor?

Very good. Let me have a go at both. And Adrian will correct me if he feels necessary. Look, on Asia Pacific, the market has been very competitive, and we are seeing intense competition in many of those markets. as I would say internally, and that's our job. That's what we do every day. In our 40 markets around the world, we compete and drive great performance for our OEM partners. I think it's quite natural for us to make sure that our cost base is at the right point for that business to protect margins. But we also have to focus on the top line to your point.

Now what are we doing? We're working really closely with our OEM partners to make sure we've got the right products for those markets. I'd give you an example in Hong Kong, where we've just launched in Q4, bZ3X, which is a Toyota pure EV made in China that gave better market share in December and again in January. It's a really great product for that market. I would hope to see it in other markets across APAC.

We've had new brand launches I referenced before in Australia like Foton and Deepal, which will give us some top line momentum. And then we will launch 10 new products this year in Singapore from Toyota and Suzuki across hybrid and EV range to get us back to where I'd like us to be in those markets, which is back to gaining market share. So we'll look after the bottom line through cost, and we are here to compete and win in the marketplace and drive top line.

And the second question?

And the second question, in terms of brands, look, you'll forgive me if I don't say who fits into each of these categories. But look, we've effectively classified our OEMs into As, Bs and C category OEMs. We want to build our whole business around A and B OEMs. where we can have headquarter relationships, regional relationships and, of course, local relationships. And those OEMs, we think we are fit for the market and we can make good returns for shareholders with. But there are some OEMs that don't fit into the strategic category where they just have to wash their face and make money for us and our shareholders.

And when we find those brands are not able, for whatever reason to compete in that marketplace and make returns for us and gain market share, then I think the best thing for us to do is to very cordially, politely and collaboratively exit those relationships. And by the way, you should expect us to continue to do that in 2026.

You already have the microphone Mr. Nussey.

Yes. Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt. A couple left from me. First of all, the phrase enhanced collaboration with OEMs strikes me as a great catchall. So beyond sort of the model lineup, are you negotiating better inventory support? Are they helping share some of the costs? Are you getting better buying terms in those regions, which obviously are under a little bit of pressure is the first question.

And secondly, specifically on the Chilean market, just your thoughts on TIV there, the penetration of your brands and the ability to keep scaling margin in that particular geography?

Chile. Right. Okay. I'll take them both, and Adrian can supplement if it's okay. So in the catchall of enhanced OEM collaboration, Andrew, look, you would expect us to have really good relationships with the OEMs that we've been working with for 4 decades. And I think bringing the power of those relationships to bear on our markets is really, really important.

To give you an answer about some of the more specifics of what we're doing, we're repricing certain models where we need to regain competitiveness and therefore, give us an opportunity to grow share. We've done that in a number of our markets across our OEM portfolio. We're investing in the brand and front-end salespeople and after-salespeople; aftersales, of course, being important to grow this value-added services proportion of our business.

We've been investing, as you know, over the last few years in making sure that our customer satisfaction as witnessed in reputation.com is going up, up, up, up and greater than our competitors in every one of our markets, which you can see APAC grew substantially last year, and the overall group did too.

And then we're working close -- even more closely with our OEMs to make sure we're getting the right products into our market to drive our competitive position. I mentioned some of them before in terms of bZ3X, for instance, into Hong Kong, more Suzuki products; similarly with Subaru, you can see what we're doing with Great Wall Motors and Changan and Foton in Australia. So even deeper collaboration, bringing our knowledge of markets with our OEMs great products to make sure we win in the market.

Then in terms of Chile, where do we see that brand portfolio playing out? Look, our market shares are there or thereabouts around 23%, 24%, 25% in Chile. The economy -- the economic indicators in Chile are pretty good. You've seen a new government come into place. We're seeing interest rates in about the right place, inflation coming down, consumer sentiment in the right place for us. This year, we think the market will grow 5% or 6%, but it's still at an all-time low really, low 300s. (sic) [ 300,000 ] It might get to 330,000 vehicles this year. It's been as high as 420,000, 430,000 previously.

So I think as we move -- we're not saying this year will be the year for a big recovery in Chile. Maybe in 2027, but an uptick in growth. And then look, in terms of our brand portfolio, oh my word, do we have a great brand portfolio in Chile, right, from entry-level vehicles right through to the top end. And our portfolio, I think, is -- for me, is in about the right place. You obviously see product cycles coming through where we may see one OEM dip, but another one will build up, and we have a great retail network with our own and third parties inside the country.

Do you want to add anything to that?

Yes. The only thing I would add, Andrew, is for those of you that are watching the market data, do be aware that in the fourth quarter, there was some regulatory change, which I think probably pulled a bit of volume into December -- into the fourth quarter. So you saw higher rates of growth. That's not the exit rate in reality. So -- and you'll probably see a slightly weaker Q1 off the back of it. And as Duncan said, we're calling a 5% to 6% growth off a 310,000 market, 330,000 that's still a good way short of historical peaks.

Very good. Good to see you're organizing yourselves very well.

It's Tim Ramskill from Bank of America. Two questions from me, please. And I'll sort of kind of -- it's probably 2 parts to the first one. But there's obviously a lot of discussion around competitive dynamics in particularly the APAC market. So I guess my simple question is, why don't those characteristics play out as those Chinese OEMs continue to develop further in your other locations? But then linking to that, how does that play into your thoughts around M&A? You've obviously called out M&A today as an incremental focus. What are your target businesses that you're looking at facing in terms of some of the characteristics for them? They're smaller typically. [Audio Gap]

[Audio Gap] through cost actions. And to your point, it's not just APAC that's seeing competition, we're seeing competition throughout Europe and the Americas and look at the results we've delivered in the Americas and Europe and Africa with a record bottom line performance in both regions and a record top line performance in our Europe and Africa business. So we have the opportunity to perform even better in APAC. And you can see that with what we're doing in our cost base and OEM collaboration to drive the top line.

Then to your point around M&A, look, do I see it? If you go right back up to the top on what Adrian was saying before, in terms of our capital allocation policy, we can wisely use shareholder funds to grow this group's EPS. We will do it by continuing to reduce our share count and looking for value-accretive opportunities through M&A, the bulk of which I would say at the minute would be in our Europe and Africa regions and in the Americas. And while the APAC team super focused on driving improved performance, top line and bottom line.

Abi, I think you're next.

Can I just -- that was my first question. Sorry -- it was well hid and I recognized. Just -- sorry, the second one really quickly. There's obviously the GBP 17 million of sort of more one-off gains, which you do include in the sort of the reported adjusted PBT. Is there anything you might anticipate in the next couple of years of a similar nature? Is there any other sort of noncore tidying up that might bring with a small gain?

That's probably mine.

Yes.

Thank you, Tim. Yes, GBP 17 million. If you look back over history, this group has a track record of capital recycling where we've deployed our assets around the group and where we see those assets deploying suboptimal returns because I want to be very clear, these are not sale and leasebacks. These are noncore asset disposals. And as we look forward, yes, we continue to see the opportunity to optimize some assets that continue to be deployed. There's nothing factored in for 2026, and you'll see nothing held on the balance sheet as an asset held for sale. So it's probably over -- slightly over the medium term that we see the opportunity. But let me be very clear, these are not tactical steps that are there for other reasons. These are strategic moves as we look to optimize returns and recycle capital.

Abi Bell from UBS. Just 2 questions from me. Firstly, on the Q4 trading trends. It looks like there was quite good volume momentum, although a bit softer than the strong Q3 you reported. How should we read your guidance to be at the lower end of that 3% to 5% range for this year? Can you specifically talk about any contract ramp-ups, losses or product launches that we should be aware of or anything else?

And then secondly, just back to the BYD contract. Can you explain how the BYD contract differs to other contracts in your portfolio? You highlighted that the tenure of the relationship has been shorter than other brands. So how does that translate to the performance or the conversations you have? And can you explain why you're therefore confident in the longer-term relationships such as Changan or GAC?

Sure. Adrian, do you want to [indiscernible]

Yes, I'll start off. I mentioned earlier on the question around some of the Latin American markets, we saw some real positive momentum. There was a bit of phasing in Q4, which might support that. If you look at our half 2 growth rates, where organic growth was 5%, that's probably a better guide as to the barometer. And if you think about the momentum in Asia Pac versus the momentum that we've got in Europe and Africa and the Americas, they're the offsets that get you to that lower end of the 3% to 5%.

You saw a small price mix headwind as we skewed the business more towards a heavier weight in the Americas, where average selling prices are a bit lower. I expect that to be broadly neutral across the course of this year. And they are the building blocks that get us to the 3% to 5% and towards the lower end of that as we think about '26.

Duncan on BYD?

Thank you very much, Adrian. Well, so look, if I take a step back, BYD seems policy-driven. And you can see that in Germany, what's happened in the Netherlands with other distribution companies, what's happening in the Nordics -- so it seems to be more policy-driven. If I look at our performance in Belux, we have performed, as you would expect Inchcape to perform, really strongly. And we will collaborate as ever with our OEM partners and BYD. And look, we performed well also with the BYD contract we have in Ethiopia and in the Baltics.

You then mentioned about our other Chinese partners in Changan and Great Wall in particular. Look, through the Derco acquisition, we have relationship to go with those OEMs back for 15 or 20-plus years. They are big believers, as I am, that using independent distribution enables them to drive performance. So we look after those small- to medium-sized, more complex markets. Well, they drive performance in the larger markets in the world. And I think that's exactly what you see playing out with both of those OEMs that you referenced.

So if I look at Changan, of the 50 contracts that we've won over the last few years, they represent a good chunk of those would be more than about 15 contracts with many in the Americas and our Europe and Africa region and in APAC. And you've seen us call out deals with their sub-brands like Deepal,, Nevo, Avatr. We just launched Avatr in Costa Rica. So we're working super closely. We know them at headquarters, regional -- and regional levels, and we're driving performance for them.

And similarly for Great Wall, where we've won more contracts in the Americas, hopefully more to come and of course, contracts in APAC. So as ever, we will be super collaborative, but I think we have a brilliant portfolio of long-term relationships and brands.

Arthur?

Arthur from Citi. So first question for me. In terms of your markets as a whole, are you able to just talk a little bit about which markets you think are performing kind of above historical norms and which ones below historical norms?

Second question, just on Europe. Are you able to just talk about which countries you're particularly optimistic about in '26 and which ones performed particularly well for you in '25 and indeed, the vice versa?

And then finally, just on the aftersales stuff. If I remember correctly, some of your markets performed incredibly well in '21 and '22. When do you sort of think that then starts to translate into aftersales?

Okay. I'm doing the second one.

Sure enough.

And I'll comment on -- make a comment on your market point, Arthur. So if I start on the left-hand side of the map, and let's go through the big markets. So post the Derco acquisition, those big markets, think Chile, Colombia and Peru, where are they now? Chile at the low end of the 10-year average in terms of total sales in that market. This year, it might get to around a 330 (sic) [ 330,000 ] number. I think it will pick up in subsequent years. And the economics are set, I think, for '27 and onwards to have a nice boost in that marketplace. And I'm very pleased with our share.

And in those other 2 markets, Peru and Colombia, oh my word, are we pleased we bought that Derco business. We've gained share in Colombia. We've gained share in Peru. Both those markets grew at over 20% last year. I am optimistic for their performance in 2026. And then looking -- our story in Europe is very much of super, super performance in those Southern European markets where we have gained share and the markets seem to be supportive of longer-term growth.

So Greece, I think, will continue to grow for us. We're optimistic about Bulgaria. Romania has had some changes in taxation and legislation, which have moderated the market a little bit, but our performance has been super strong. And I think in Northern Europe, so if I take markets like Finland, I just think those economies might take a little while to come back. So there's still many of those markets at historic lows, including places like Estonia.

Then if I move to APAC, look, I think Australia will be about flat at 1.2 million units or so this year. We saw an interest rate tick up a little bit in the fourth quarter, which generally moderates consumer demand, but we've got a good portfolio, and I think we'll grow share.

Look, on our Asian markets that we operate in, they're still at their lows. Singapore still has another 3-or-so years to go in that upward COE cycle. We're getting better product into that market to enable us to access some of that growth. So I think APAC in general, those markets will grow over time, and we're working super hard with our OEM partners to make sure we have the right products that we're bringing into those markets.

And on aftersales, Arthur, let me sort of explain a little bit of the dynamic as to how this works. So -- and we've got one of our European colleagues at the back of the room, and he knows very well that some of the Japanese brands, we see vehicles staying in the retail network for the main brands well into the 10th year of a particular vehicle's life. And so we get very, very high levels of retention rates. And the opportunity for us to take the things that we do for those brands into the Chinese brands where we typically see substantially lower levels of retention is the thing that's going to drive aftersales gross profit at a faster rate than our vehicle growth. And that's the opportunity that really presents if you think about the UIO that we've got in Latin America, particularly, to take the learnings we have from the Japanese brands and deploy it into those sorts of brands across the region. I think the opportunity is really big for us.

So that's some of the dynamics that will help. We're not going to give you a time frame of when we're going to do that, and we're not going to say, look, this brand in this market's -- retention in the 10 year is that, but that's our strategic intent.

Very good. So I think.

We've got one on the conference line.

Okay. So let's move to phone lines.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Akshat Kacker from JPM.

Akshat from JPMorgan. Just 2 left, please. The first one on APAC. I see you mentioned some production disruption in certain markets in the first half. Could you just give us more details on that? And if you think we can maintain the margin profile in that region to around 6% to 7% in the start of the year? Or should we be below that range in the first half?

And the second question is on contract exits and wins that you've announced. So with Geely, I remember you signed a global strategic agreement in 2021 with a focus on LatAm. So does the recent development mark a full stop to distributing Geely vehicles for now? And on the other hand, I see you have been making a lot of announcements with XPENG. Could you just give us more details on discussions with these multiple Chinese OEMs and which ones should we look out for going forward?

Akshat, thank you very much for those questions. So look, I think -- in terms of the first one on APAC, Adrian, if you could comment on margins, actually, you may as well comment on production as well, and I'll talk about portfolio management.

Sure. Thank you for the question, Akshat. Production disruption is very specific to some of our Japanese OEMs. And again, it's a very similar dynamic that we had last year where there's some repurposing and reengineering of some of the production lines that will impact supply in the first half and push supply and push us into a second half weighting, particularly in Australia.

And to your question around margins, look, I think the work we are doing around cost and making sure we've got the right cost base across the region and in specific markets where we've got a slightly different rate of sale as to where we've had previously. I think that will all serve to underpin margins as we have seen previously. So hopefully, that gives you some reassurance around the work we are doing to make sure margins stick.

Duncan, back to you.

Very good. Thank you, Adrian. So Akshat, in terms of then portfolio management, the first thing to say is I expect us in 2026 to continue to optimize our portfolio with an eye on shareholder returns for OEMs that we don't necessarily have at the top end of our strategic analysis.

And your specific question about Geely. So in '21, I recall us signing that relationship with Geely. And I was very clear at the time, we're going to start in Chile. And if we can make Chile work mutually for customers, for the OEM partner and for us, then we'd expand. We did take on 3 further markets.

Now my view on that is that the product portfolio relative to where those markets are in their transition to new energy vehicles, it's difficult for them to be a 5% market share player or greater, which is the aspiration for that particular OEM. And our belief was that portfolio was not capable of getting to that market share. And therefore, we have been working constructively with Geely across 4, and we would call them immaterial markets in the Americas, to move those on to other distribution partners.

Relationship -- and that has all been handled in a super smooth way, just as you would expect Inchcape to behave. Now at the same time, with those core OEM partners that we've been growing relationships with for 20 years, we've signed more and more contracts, Geely and Great Wall being a good example. And then we have started working with XPENG initially in Europe, in our Northern European markets. We've also taken XPENG into the Iceland acquisition, where that business is performing quite nicely. And we have just secured that XPENG in Colombia. Let's see what else happens this year.

And in terms of go-forward OEMs and contract signings, look, this is a lumpy business we're in. We'll give you a regular update at each of our quarterly earnings updates. And as usual, we'll show you, and you can see it in today's pack, the last slide in our deck will go through -- in the appendix will go through wins during the year and exits too, just so you can keep close to how we're managing our overall portfolio.

Final thing I'd say is we have a brilliant portfolio of long-term great OEMs. Thank you very much, Akshat.

And nothing on the webcast. Very good. So look, in that case, thank you very much for coming along to hear about how Inchcape performed in 2025. We delivered a strong 2025 performance. We grew EPS greater than 13%. We intend to grow in 2026 and our midterm targets and our aspiration accordingly are in rude health. Thank you very much, everybody.

Hello, and welcome to Inchcape's 2025 Q3 Trading Update. We are now joined by -- today by Duncan Tait, Group Chief Executive; Adrian Lewis, Group Chief Financial Officer; and Rob Gurner, Head of Investor Relations. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the call over to Duncan. Please go ahead.

Very good. Thank you, [ Sergey ], and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm here with our CFO, Adrian Lewis; and our Head of Investor Relations, Rob Gurner. I'll give an overview of trading and strategic execution during the quarter before handing over to Adrian for more detail on our regional performance and the outlook, which has remained unchanged since March. We'll then take your questions. Our performance in Q3 was supported by market growth, distribution contract wins and ongoing product launches. However, headwinds remain in Asia. We delivered strong organic revenue growth in the third quarter of 8% and reported growth of 7% against softer comparators and in the context of a market growth of 5%.

This reflects the underlying strength and diversification of our business as well as consistent operational execution by our teams. We also continue to make progress against our Accelerate+ strategy. We further scaled the group through the acquisition of Askja in Iceland, an exciting new market for Inchcape, where we are now the market leader. This bolt-on acquisition also helps to further strengthen and diversify our global portfolio of OEMs. Our progress in optimizing our business is perhaps most evidenced with the disposal of a retail-only business in Australia, which generated annualized revenue of around GBP 100 million. As we have said before, optimizing our retail network is a core pillar of how we operate as a distributor in providing the most efficient route to market. Our execution against Accelerate+ is also highlighted by our successful track record in winning distribution contracts, including the recent addition of GAC AION in Greece.

We're also continuing to optimize our distribution contract portfolio. And in this quarter, we have, in collaboration with our OEM partners, decided to exit 4 immaterial contracts in certain small Americas markets, which are unlikely to provide the opportunity for mutually viable commercial operation. So to sum up, Inchcape's performance during the third quarter was in line with our expectations and demonstrates our ability to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy. This supports our confidence for another year of growth in 2025, in line with our medium-term target to deliver EPS CAGR of more than 10%. And with that, I'll hand over to Adrian.

Thank you, Duncan, and good morning, everyone. During the period, the group generated revenue of GBP 2.3 billion, up in Q3, 7% in constant currency and on a reported basis. Reversing out the impact of disposed noncore retail assets and the impact of recently acquired businesses, organic revenue was up 8%, with distribution contract wins contributing around 1/3 of this organic revenue growth. Before looking at the regional detail, at a headline level, the market trends were as expected. Underlying Inchcape TIV was up 5% compared to the first half of the year where industry volumes in our markets were down 2%.

This is in part due to softer comparators in Q3, but also a continuation of the improving trends we have seen in the Americas and a strengthening rate of growth in Europe. We outperformed the market with our volumes up 13% to around 91,000 cars in the quarter. And we spoke earlier in the year about the need to see a step-up in volumes in H2 versus H1 as well as improved growth rates. This is a good indicator of the step-up in absolute performance as we anticipated. Summarizing the regions, starting in the Americas, the market environment continues to improve with our performance ahead of the market.

Colombia and Peru continue to see very strong growth and Chile, on an underlying basis, is showing positive trends. And it is worth noting that in Chile in September, we saw a very strong market due to regulatory changes, pulling demand forward. This will normalize in Q4. Some markets like Costa Rica remained weaker. We are seeing the usual seasonality in the region this year with our performance underpinned by new product launches and contract wins. Turning to APAC. The macro and competitive dynamics that proved to be a headwind for us in H1 continued with the premium segment remaining weak. The Singapore market continues along the certificate of entitlement up cycle, but remains a highly competitive market as does Hong Kong.

Australia returned to growth in the quarter. Our performance in the region is supported by new product launches, such as the Subaru Forester in Australia and a number of Toyota products in key markets. Demand for these is on track, and we expect this to be supportive of an improving performance in comparison to H1. And finally, our business in Europe and Africa continues to show positive momentum and market outperformance, especially so in Romania and Bulgaria, where we have seen strong growth.

Growth was enhanced by the contribution from the contracts announced in recent years across the region as well as a first contribution from our Icelandic operation. While only a revenue update, as expected, we have seen reducing inventory levels since the position at the end of June. And as Duncan mentioned, we have maintained our disciplined approach to capital allocation. And alongside the acquisition of Askja, we have now acquired approximately GBP 200 million of our own shares, equating to 8% of the shares in issue as part of our GBP 250 million share buyback program that will be supportive of EPS growth.

In relation to acquisitions, we see these as a crucial part of our growth strategy, and we remain disciplined on valuation as we look across a healthy pipeline of bolt-on acquisitions. And finally, on to outlook. Reiterating our position through the year, we have -- we continue to expect another year of growth at prevailing currency rates, including the impact of tariffs. Our outlook for this year is based on our expectation for a stronger second half of the year compared to half 1, and our performance in Q3 is supportive of this. Our performance in the second half continues to be driven by product launches in a number of markets. And so far, these are progressing in line with our expectations. Additionally, we continue to manage costs, inventory and working capital, and you have seen us take further steps in the optimization of our retail network.

We continue -- we expect to deliver a higher rate of EPS growth relative to profit growth this year, driven by our operating performance and capital allocation and in line with our medium-term target of greater than 10% compound annual growth rate. So now let's take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] First question is from Arthur Truslove from Citi.

First question just on capital allocation. Can you just remind us how you think about the scenario in which there would be another buyback at full year? And second question from me, obviously, your price mix element is slightly sort of negative 5% or thereabouts in the quarter. Are you able to just talk about how that likely impacts margin and things like -- how the price mix likely impacts margin, please? I know that's something that has been a concern to people in the run-up to this.

Good morning, Arthur. Adrian, over to you both, please.

Thank you, Duncan. Thanks, Arthur, for the questions. So I'll start with capital allocation. And I think our policy, Arthur, is really clear. What we said in our medium-term guidance that was issued in March is that on the back of a very highly cash-generative business, turning profit after tax into cash at around 100%, we'll pay dividends with 40% of EPS, and then we will do share buybacks and M&A. And the balance between those 2 with the cash that we generate will be around -- will be decided based on a disciplined approach to valuation, and that's in the context of our own shares and a very healthy pipeline of bolt-on acquisitions.

As I said in my words, we are super excited about expanding the scale of this group. We were very pleased to find value in the Askja deal and continue to look at a pipeline of bolt-ons that were very -- that I think can add scale to this group. But as we have done this year, you can expect us to be disciplined about how we do that in 2026. On price mix, what you've seen -- and absolutely, you've got it right. So look, 13% volume growth in the context of a market growth of 5% and an organic revenue growth of 8%. So what you're seeing there and that delta between the 13% and the 8%, is really about a faster-growing Americas region, a faster-growing Europe and Africa region, where we play in segments that have a lower average selling price in comparison to Asia, which in proportion to the rest of the group is smaller in proportion than it was in previous years.

1/3 of our Americas business is Chinese brands, and 1/3 of our growth rate this year has come from new contract wins, which, as you know, is skewed towards Chinese brands. What that's doing is bringing down the average selling price. We've been pretty consistent around our view on margin and how we think about margin as we look forward at around circa 6%. And I wouldn't -- and I don't think you should think about that price mix and changing mix within the business as a headwind to margin. We're about driving scale through this organization, leveraging our overhead, and that's what's going to underpin margins as we look into the medium term.

Just one follow-up. Obviously, about 18 months -- well, 12 to 18 months ago, you presented some data on the profit progression in new contracts. Is it reasonable to think that these contracts that are growing very nicely are progressing in line with what you presented that in the Driving Seat episode? I think it was in May 2024, if I remember correctly.

Yes. I think Arthur, great question. I'll take this one, Duncan, if I may. Yes, look, you started to see us disclose the contribution that they are making to our overall growth. It's around 1/3 of the 8% has come from contracts that have been signed over the recent few years. And I think net-net, we're at about 50 contracts in aggregate that we've signed over the last few years. And the vast majority of them are still in year 1 and year 2.

And that 5-year time line that we presented back in that in the Driving Seat webinar, how the average contract evolves, I think we're still pretty consistent with, and we're seeing those 2022 and 2023 contracts starting to climb up that curve. I'd say one thing we have noticed it sometimes takes us a little to get from the moment of signing through to products in the market. Sometimes it's getting through homologation process, getting all the right vehicle specification documents into local governments where we're working with brands that aren't necessarily used to working in export markets and international markets. That's taking us a little bit longer to get out of the blocks perhaps, but the trajectory of maturity continues to be on that archetype as we presented in May last year.

Our next question is from Abi Bell from UBS.

Just wanted to ask 2 questions about the growth building blocks. So firstly, your comment that 1/3 of the growth was from contract wins, so this is about 2.7% of organic revenue growth. Should we assume that is the rough contribution you'd expect in Q4 and at the start of next year? And you've won a lot [Technical Difficulty] you mentioned. So any help on timing of the ramp-up, that would be [Technical Difficulty].

And then secondly, your markets were clearly strong this quarter. I mentioned there were some markets like Chile, and it sounds like you expect Q4 to be slightly softer, but the contract wins and end markets, do you expect Q4 to see positive growth at this stage?

Thank you so much, Abi. Adrian, you again.

Yes, so 1/3 of our growth absolute [Technical Difficulty] contracts, we're really pleased with that. Those contracts, which I referred to earlier as sort of 2022 and 2023 beginning to hit their straps as we expected to, as we -- when we look at the maturity curve that we expect to see. We expect them to provide a contribution into Q4. And I think I'd point you to our medium-term guidance framework, which talks about a market outperformance. Market is growing at around 1% to 2%, 2% to 3% outperformance to give a 3% to 5% volume growth. That's the sort of framework and how you should think about rolling forward, the contribution from these contracts that we've been running over recent years.

As I said, a lot of them are still in the foothills of their growth maturity curve, and we've got work to do to make sure that they contribute as we expect them to over the '26, '27 and '28 time period. On growth rates, looking into Q4, as we've said in the statements and in our words, Q3 had some softer comps. So I would expect Q4 to be a growth quarter for us, but I wouldn't expect it necessarily to be as strong as we have seen in Q3, in part due to the comparators.

Is that helpful, Abi?

Yes, that's great. Just a quick follow-up. Do you think you'll be disclosing the contract contributions going forward in your remarks or materials?

I think we've heard investors and our analyst community loud and clear that a greater level of disclosure in this regard is helpful. So you should expect to see us to start to talk about how it contributes to the group, both strategically and in the near-term results.

We'll now take our next question from David Brockton from Deutsche Numis.

I also have 2 questions as well. Firstly, could I just return to the price/mix headwind from the first question. I guess one element there that's been contributing has been a softer premium market, particularly in Asia. And as you look towards next year for the business, can you just comment on whether those pressures should ease as you lap this year? Or is that on a worsening trend in that segment, please? The second question relates to Australia. Just a clarification for me. Can you confirm you're now completely out of retail activity in Australia? And is the sort of strategy evolved there? Or am I missing something because I thought there was a benefit to the partially integrated model there?

Very good. Thank you, David. Look, I'll take those. So specifically about Asia, look, we we've seen 2 dynamics in Asia this year. One is more pressure on the premium segment, and we've seen those declines, which we referred to at our interims of a 40% decline in the premium market in Indonesia as an example. And then generally across Asia, it's a really, really competitive environment. Do I expect 2026 to see a big step-up or an improvement in that environment in Asia? Look, I think our teams are executing pretty well. But we -- do I expect the premium segment to bounce upwards or for the competition and the competitive environment to reduce? No, I don't.

So I think we will continue to execute well, but Asia is super competitive and the premium segment is still quiet. But what I would say going back to the way Adrian is encouraging us to think about 2026 is we should apply our medium-term growth framework to how we think about 2026. Then just in terms of Australia and retail, so let's be clear about what we're trying to do. We have had a program over the last half a decade or so of reducing our exposure to pure retail. So like the U.K. business where we don't have distribution contracts, but we had end retail, and in Australia, what you see us do is take those dealerships in Brisbane, which are supporting OEMs where we're not the distribution partner, that is the business we've sold.

So it's exactly like you've seen us do in the U.K., the way you saw us exit Russia and other businesses in that regard. In terms of our distribution business, retail is super important. We don't need to own and control all of it. And in fact, in Australia, we own about 20% of the retail, physical retail that supports our distribution contracts in that country. And I would remind you, we've just launched Foton in Australia also.

Our next question is from Akshat Kacker from JPMorgan.

A couple of questions, please. The first one is on the mutual exits from the small contracts in Americas that you've talked about. I see that 3 of them are with Geely. And obviously, this comes on the back of the exit from Chile at the end of last year as well. And I do remember that you have a global cooperation agreement with Chile -- with Geely, sorry. So just a question on Geely still is an important distribution partner and how are your discussions actually evolving with them? If you could just share some more details, that will be helpful. The second one is on Asia, and I appreciate it's a Q3 trading call. You've talked about a very competitive environment. There are continuous headwinds. Could you talk about the margin recovery potential for that region going into the second half, please? We've obviously come down from the 8% to 9% margins in the last few years to 6.5% in the first half, but now we have higher volume contribution and positive momentum from product launches. Could you just talk about Asia margins, please?

Yes, sure. Akshat, let me clarify your second question. Are you talking about the Americas region?

Asia.

It's Asia, okay. Very good. Thank you very much. I do want to clarify that. Look, I'll take the first question and Adrian on the second. So look, let's put this in context. We've won over 50 contracts over the last few years, many of them in our Americas business, with OEMs from Europe, from Japan and from China. And we did sign a global relationship with Geely just a few years ago. So if you look at the Geely brand itself, yes, we have now exited the contracts that we signed in the Americas. We have done so in a highly collaborative basis with our OEM partner.

And we genuinely wish them all the very best as those contracts move to other third parties. But actually, let's not forget, we've also signed a whole bunch of contracts with smart, which is a Geely joint venture with Mercedes. We have our Volvo business also in the Americas, and I'd hope that we would have some more Volvo businesses over time. So in terms of our relationship with Geely group, I think that's in super shape. And those particular brands that we've exited, look, they're better off with other parties running those distribution contracts in those small markets in Central America.

And in respect of margins, Akshat, and you took the words right out of my mouth. This is a trading update, so I won't comment very specifically. Safe to say, you're absolutely right. This descaling effect we saw in the first half of the second half skew of volumes weighed on margins. We've seen that scale come back in the third quarter and expect to do so with product launches in the fourth quarter. We launched Subaru Forester into Australia. We've got some product going into Singapore and Hong Kong, EV going into Hong Kong with the bZ3X started this month.

And we've got some -- the Noah product going into Singapore. They play in certain segments, which will be helpful to us, particularly in MPV, fleet and taxi. So we should see the -- we expect to see the rescaling effect in Asia. Save to say that, that premium segment continues to be weak. And referring to Duncan's comments around it being a very competitive environment. We've seen an improved performance in Q3 in the context of a market that is now flat and in the context of our half 1 performance. But I want you to sort of hear the words of caution of Asia being a difficult environment for us, but that rescaling effect will be supportive of a better margin profile in half 2.

Our next question is from Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt.

A couple of questions from me as well. First of all, given the significance of the new contracts in terms of the growth profile, can you just give some color around the pipeline in terms of signing up new contracts, whether that's sort of OEM or region? And secondly, we cast our minds back to the disposal of the U.K. retail operations. I think from recollection, you retained some of the liabilities from any potential misselling of consumer products and commissions and what have you. Given the recent FCA paper, do you see any exposure for the group there in terms of that historic disposal, please?

Very good. Andrew, I'll take one. Adrian will follow up on number two. So in terms of contracts, so we've won a lot, as I keep on saying on this call and in our previous engagements, and they're starting to come through in our revenue growth in the second half, which I am pleased about. And generally, I've said this group will win somewhere around high single into double digits contracts annually. This year, so far, gross number is 9. Do I think we'll sign a few more contracts before the end of the year? Most likely. And then, look, are we going to hit 10-ish every year? This is a bit of a lumpy business in terms of contract wins. But the teams are doing well, and we're talking to key OEM partners across our 3 regions. So in summary, you should expect us to sign a few more before the end of the year.

And Andrew, in relation to the U.K. retail disposal, your recollection is absolutely correct. We did provide an indemnity in certain circumstances where that FCA investigation was going to come back to us as was appropriate at the time. Now the FCA is in their redress scheme, is in a consultation period. So it wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on how that would conclude before that does conclude. And I'd just point you back to what we said in our half year statements, we had an unquantified contingent liability set in our disclosure schedules, and we'll have to reconsider our position post the consultation period as that plays through for consumers through the third and fourth quarter, and you'll see more in our full year financial statements in the spring.

[Operator Instructions] And we will now take our last question today from Sanjay Vidyarthi from Panmure Liberum.

Just one for me. I'm just looking at the TIV data that you provided. Just a couple of ones that I'd like to go on, Hong Kong. Is there anything in terms of phasing there in that being up 43% in Q3? And then just across Europe, there's been remarkable strength, double-digit growth across most of the markets. What's driving that?

Good morning, Sanjay. Over to Adrian for both.

So Hong Kong data, yes, look, you remember last year, we talked about tough comps in the first half and weaker comps in the second half. And what you see in Hong Kong data was a little bit of that playing through. Hong Kong is 10,000 units, 10,000 to 11,000 units a quarter business. We're lapping an 8,000 unit quarter in Q3. And that's because there was a pull forward into Q1 last year -- sorry, Q2 last year with some regulatory changes where they changed the taxation rates applied to EVs on imports.

That's what skewed the market. 12,000 cars in the quarter is a pretty decent quarter in what is a highly competitive market. There's nothing in this year's phasing that would indicate that's a pull forward, but we see that market as being a broadly 40,000 unit market and pretty stable at that level through the year. In relation to Europe, yes, look, absolutely, we've seen a very strong market performance.

There are some nuances in there, both slightly weaker comp, and you can see that in the historics. Romania has a slight inflated number, I would say, because of some -- again, some regulatory changes there. We expect that to level out a bit into the fourth quarter, and you can see some fairly spiky quarterly data in Romania, big negative, big positive. I'd encourage you in the circumstance for Europe to look at a full year rate of growth for the market as a barometer for momentum in the region.

Okay. Understood. Is there any kind of distortion there from EV sales? Or is there anything to think about on that not just Romania but across Europe?

I would point to Bulgaria -- sorry, Belgium and Luxembourg as being a market that is shifting towards EV very quickly in relation to some taxation changes that came into effect at the start of this year, and that's a market that is shifting quite quickly to EV and BYD, where we're distributing for them has been -- we've been real winner in that space in that regard. And that's -- when we talk about some of the momentum we're seeing in those contracts, that BYD Belgium contract is one of those early ones that where we're seeing that business gather pace. That's the only EV point I would make.

And obviously, you can see the market data there was fairly flat, but it is a market that's shifting to EV. I wouldn't read the other market growth rates as an indicator of an accelerated curve.

It appears there are currently no further questions. With this, I'd like to hand over back over to Duncan for closing remarks. Over to you, sir.

Thanks very much, [ Sergey ]. So thank you for joining us this morning, everyone. To summarize, our performance in Q3 was supported by market growth, distribution contract wins and ongoing product launches, while headwinds remain in Asia. We reiterate our outlook for 2025, and we remain well placed to deliver on our target of greater than 10% EPS growth over the medium term. That's it from us. Please get in touch as well if you'd like to follow-up on anything we discussed today. Bye.