JD Sports Fashion Stock

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to JD Sports Fashion Plc HY '27 Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I would now like to hand over to the CEO of JD Sports, Régis Schultz, to start the presentation.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our half year results. I'm Régis Schultz, CEO of JD Group, and I'm joined here today by Dominic Platt, our CFO. On [indiscernible] for the presentation, I will start with the key message from the first half. Dominic will then take you through the financials and guidance before I return with an update on the business and our strategic progress. We will then now open for Q&A.

We deliver a resilient sales performance in the first half against a backdrop that was challenging for our industry and for our customer. Youth unemployment and cost of living pressure both increased, while the footwear product cycle continue to evolve in a highly promotional market. Group organic sales were down 0.7%, including a 2.1 percentage point contribution from new selling space despite having over 100 fewer stores overall, in line with our strategy of fewer, bigger and better stores.

Our response to a maturing market and challenging tragic condition is to control the controllables. That means focusing on our customer, bringing them the best, latest and greatest product, investing in our omnichannel proposition and maintaining tight discipline on our cost and capital. We are making clear progress against our strategic priority and delivered against significant milestone. We are investing to improve what we offer to our customer and to enhance efficiency and productivity of our assets. I will come back to this later.

Our product proposition is strengthening and more resilient than ever. While footwear sales were softer overall, we are encouraged by the momentum in running performance and lifestyle and newer footwear style. Apparel and Accessory increased to 36% of group sales in line with our strategy, supported by a strong product lineup implemented by our own brand and license brand with faster and more agile reaction to customer preference.

Online was another area of progress. Online sales grew by more than 5%, rising to 20% of group sales. This was supported by the continued rollout of our new e-commerce platform, Shopify and commerce tool, which unlock new capability, expand choice and service for our customer. Our discipline on cost and capital is again strengthening our balance sheet. Net cash improved by nearly GBP 300 million year-on-year, even after returning GBP 260 million to shareholders to buy back and dividends over the last 12 months. This is clear evidence of the high cash generation of our business. After all, cash is king and cash is real.

Finally, our full year '27 guidance is unchanged from the Q2 trading statement. Profit before tax and adjusting items of between GBP 700 million to GBP 800 million and free cash flow of GBP 460 million to GBP 520 million. This reflects both the market backdrop and also our continued focus on cost and capital discipline.

I will now hand over to Dominic to talk through the financials in more details.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you, Régis. So let's start with our headline financials here on Slide 5. And unless stated otherwise, all my commentary is on a constant currency basis. As Régis outlined, total sales were down 0.8% against a tough backdrop. Allowing for a small disposal in the prior year, organic sales were 0.7% lower. Net new space contributed 2.1 percentage points to sales despite us having 106 or 2.2% fewer stores, demonstrating improving productivity in our new space. And to complete the sales bridge, like-for-like sales were 2.8% lower.

During the period, we maintained our trading discipline within a highly promotional market. To stay competitive and engage with our customers, we may control price investments, particularly in our online offer. The underlying impact of these investments on our gross margin was a reduction of 50 basis points. This was partially offset by higher marketing contributions year-on-year. For accounting presentation purposes, the corresponding marketing costs that are funded by these contributions are classified in OpEx. Our statutory gross margin was, therefore, down 20 basis points year-on-year.

Operating costs, excluding adjusting items and interest on lease liabilities were 1.6% higher year-on-year, driven by costs related to new store openings. Excluding new space, like-for-like operating costs were flat year-on-year. More on that later. Overall, the group's operating profit, including lease interest was GBP 294 million, 19.5% lower year-on-year, with an operating margin of 5%, 120 basis points lower. This is typically lower than the full year operating margin, reflecting the seasonality of our business with our key annual trading periods of Black Friday and peak Christmas and holiday season to come in the second half.

After net finance expenses, which were 33% lower year-on-year, profit before tax and adjusting items was GBP 282 million. Our adjusted earnings per share were 13.7% lower on a reported basis at 3.97p with a lower percentage reduction compared to profit before tax and adjusting items, showing the economic benefit of our share buyback program. For completeness, statutory PBT was GBP 241 million, 74.6% higher year-on-year. This reflects significantly lower adjusting items which in the period, principally related to the amortization of acquired intangibles.

Our free cash flow performance in H1 improved by GBP 50 million on H1 last year. The free cash outflow of GBP 18 million reflects the usual seasonality of our business with working capital outflows tending to peak in the middle of the financial year. In line with our capital allocation framework, the Board has declared an interim ordinary dividend of 0.4p per share, representing 1/3 of the previous year's total dividend. This represents an increase of 21.2% year-on-year. And finally, as of the 1st of August, before lease liabilities, we had net cash of GBP 168 million. As Régis said, that's an improvement of almost GBP 300 million versus net debt of GBP 125 million a year ago.

This slide demonstrates that JD is a well-balanced, diversified and global business. As a measure of that global diversity, 76% of our sales came from outside the U.K. from markets across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, and we have significant runway to further grow our market shares in these regions. Our online sales penetration improved year-on-year to 20% of sales with online sales up 5.2%, driven by good growth in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, and well supported by the ongoing evolution of our online ranges and technology platforms.

In the U.K., online sales were flat year-on-year. The overall 20% penetration is an average, and it varies across the group with the U.K. at 25%, 20% in North America and in the high teens in Europe and Asia Pacific. This provides ample opportunity for growth, particularly outside the U.K. As Régis will touch on later, we continue to make significant progress in building out our omnichannel proposition, strengthening our retail ecosystem to meet customers wherever and however they choose to shop and unlocking new capabilities to support higher traffic, conversion and basket values.

Organic store sales were 2.2% lower year-on-year, reflecting lower footfall outside key events, partially offset by improved conversion and the contribution from net new space. Organic online sales were up of 5.2%.

Turning to category. Our agile multi-brand model provides a diversified customer proposition through our footwear, apparel and accessory ranges. In apparel and accessories, organic sales grew by 4%. Our apparel proposition is in excellent shape, and we continue to enhance our assortment across athleisure, performance and streetwear. Apparel and accessories now represent 36% of sales. This is an average. With lower penetration outside the U.K., we believe there is significant scope for growth in this category, particularly in North America. In footwear, organic sales were 3% lower.

Throughout the half, we continue to see a significant shift in the global footwear product cycle given the transition between newer but smaller in value franchises, and larger end-of-cycle product lines. We saw strong growth across brands less affected by this transition and particularly with performance-based running silhouettes and newer footwear styles that Régis will touch on later. Finally, the share of our other category, which includes outdoor living equipment and J.D. Gym's memberships increased to 4% of our sales mix.

Turning now to our geographic regions and starting with North America, where we saw a mixed performance through the first half. In Q1, trading was supported by key consumer moments, including the U.S. tax refund season and product launches. Performance softened as Q2 progressed, reflecting weaker consumer sentiment due to incremental cost of living pressures, a slower quarter for high heat footwear product and the deferral of back-to-school demand into August. Overall, for the half, North America organic sales were down 1.7% and like-for-like was down 4%. Within this, our J.D. Fascia delivered a more resilient performance versus our complementary businesses with like-for-like of minus 1.1%, supported by a relatively more diverse product proposition.

Operating margin was 220 basis points lower year-on-year, largely due to deleverage impacts and the ongoing wind down of the stand-alone Finish Line business. On the deleveraging point, it's worth noting that our sales are typically skewed to the second half given peak trading in Q4, which applies to all regions. On Finish Line, which remains significant, but short-term factor, this business was the primary source of promotionality amongst our fascias in the half. However, we also made targeted price investments across our complementary businesses, particularly in Q2 in order to stay engaged with consumer dynamics.

The lower operating margin was also partly driven by investment to strengthen the brand positioning of the JD fascia in North America. This was partially offset by ongoing operational and back office efficiency measures across procurement, technology, and supply chain and logistics.

Turning now to Europe. This region delivered organic sales of minus 0.5%, a resilient performance in a promotional market, supported by good growth across our sporting goods businesses. Europe's operating margin was flat year-on-year with labor cost inflation and costs related to new space, offset by cost efficiencies across retail, online and supply chain operations, including the benefit of ramping automation within our Heerlen distribution center in the Netherlands and the unwind of the associated double running technology and supply chain costs. As a reminder, we expect over GBP 20 million of cost benefits across FY '27 and FY '28 as these double running costs fully unwind.

In the U.K., we saw an improved performance at JD as the half progressed, supported by apparel and accessories, which benefited from strong sales of football Replica kit in Q2. Underlying performance remained challenged, particularly in footwear in the promotional market, which was partially offset by continued momentum in JD Gyms as well as an improved performance in our outdoor business, which made meaningful operational progress in the half, including the ongoing simplification of its store estate and a well-received refresh of its product ranges. Overall, U.K. organic sales were down 1.6% for the half. The U.K. operating margin was 130 basis points lower year-on-year largely due to targeted price investments and operating cost deleverage impacts.

And finally, Asia Pacific delivered like-for-like sales growth of 3% and organic sales growth of 10.7%, with broad-based strength across footwear, apparel and accessories and its online channel. Operating margin was 90 basis points lower, largely driven by new store openings.

Taking a look now at the profit bridge on Slide 8. Please note that for the purpose of underlying analysis, I have netted off marketing contributions in gross margin against the corresponding marketing cost within OpEx, which is reflective of how we manage and report the business internally. Starting with the headwinds from the left-hand side, the like-for-like gross margin rate reduction of 60 basis points, which excludes gross margin from new space, represented GBP 37 million and like-for-like sales of minus 2.8% at a constant gross margin rate represented GBP 92 million to the decline. The contribution from net new space and annualizations was GBP 20 million.

The next bar shows like-for-like OpEx inflation of GBP 45 million, primarily driven by inflation in our labor costs, including higher salaries as well as technology, digital and marketing investments. We maintained a strong focus on cost management in the half, delivering GBP 57 million of variable and structural cost reductions through labor efficiencies, productivity initiatives and operational synergies, thereby fully offsetting like-for-like OpEx inflation. More on this in the next slide.

The year-on-year mark-to-market movement of GBP 26 million, which is noncash, reflects a credit of GBP 13 million in the half versus a charge of GBP 13 million in the prior period. We expect an offsetting mark-to-market charge of over GBP 10 million in the second half. We saw a GBP 6 million reduction in net finance expense, which excludes lease interest. The reduction was largely due to our cash generation and the benefit of the comprehensive debt refinancing we completed in July last year.

And finally, Other, which is largely the impact of translation FX year-on-year was GBP 4 million. Against a challenging market and industry backdrop, maintaining our sharp focus on cost continues to be a priority. As I described in the previous slide, we fully offset like-for-like cost inflation in the half through our variable and structural cost reductions. We proactively flex store staff levels based on customer activity to help manage labor cost inflation.

We continue to leverage our technology to drive operational efficiencies as we automate internal processes and we progressed the rollout of RFID in our JD U.K. stores. We are starting to realize benefits from our Heerlen DC related to the technology and supply chain double running costs. And beyond these structural actions, we took a broad-based approach to overhead management, driving savings across everything from procurement to travel and a range of other cost categories, or delivering meaningful savings in H1 with further benefits expected as these actions continue to flow through to H2.

There is more we are going after in H2 as we leverage our new finance systems and scheduling tools and make further progress in modernizing, automating our distribution centers to name just a few examples. We expect these actions to deliver additional benefits in H2. So overall, we expect cost savings to be more H2 weighted and as set out in May, we're on track to significantly offset like-for-like OpEx inflation for the full year.

On the next slide, we set out our summary cash flows for the half. Starting with our statutory PBT of GBP 241 million. Depreciation and amortization was GBP 450 million, up GBP 19 million year-on-year, reflecting investment in our stores, supply chain and technology. These repayments were GBP 303 million, up GBP 49 million year-on-year. This increase was partly driven by 7 lease payments made in the period compared to 6 payments in H1 last year due to the first of every month being the key lease payment date in many of the countries we operate in.

Overall, operating cash flow was GBP 433 million for the half. The change in working capital resulted in a net outflow of GBP 144 million, which compares to an outflow of GBP 263 million a year ago. This included an increase in inventory of GBP 308 million reflecting the typical seasonal investment in back-to-school stock and an inflow of GBP 164 million related to net payables. Gross capital expenditure in the half was GBP 175 million, down GBP 41 million year-on-year. Tax, interest and other cash outflows were GBP 132 million.

Overall, free cash flow was an outflow of minus GBP 18 million, an improvement of GBP 50 million on H1 last year. Dividend payments and share buybacks in the period were a combined GBP 144 million. Overall, we saw a reduction in net cash of GBP 143 million since the year-end, leading to a closing net cash position on the balance sheet of GBP 168 million before lease liabilities. This marks an improvement of GBP 293 million compared to H1 last year, after GBP 260 million of cash returns to shareholders over the last 12 months.

We continue to manage our inventory and cash with focus and discipline and maintaining an efficient balance sheet. Net inventory was up 2% year-on-year at constant FX rates, reflecting stock build ahead of the back-to-school trading period, including the impact of a deferral into August of the timing of back-to-school season in large parts of the U.S. We continue to take a disciplined approach to CapEx with a strong focus on returns. Gross CapEx for the half was GBP 175 million, equivalent to 3% of sales, notably lower than the 3.6% of sales in H1 last year.

This was driven by the completion of our supply chain investments in Europe and tighter store-related CapEx, down 19% year-on-year. I'll come back to this point on the next slide. Reflecting our discipline, our CapEx guidance for the year is now GBP 350 million to GBP 400 million. Finally, we continue to be focused on maintaining a strong and efficient balance sheet. Including lease liabilities, our net debt was just over GBP 2.9 billion, representing net leverage of 1.5x. And including the Genesis buyout option in FY '30 and FY '31, our pro forma net leverage of 2x remains in line with investment-grade levels.

Our overall liquidity position remains strong, providing us with significant headroom, including undrawn RCFs, total liquidity at period end was GBP 1.7 billion. Given the challenging global market backdrop, our highly targeted approach on store investment and tight discipline on the application of our targeted rate of return serves us well. While our stores and gym's CapEx was 19% lower year-on-year, our approach is delivering good results. Strategically, the investment in our store estate is increasingly as much about improving the productivity of our existing store estate as it is about new space. Through relocations, upsizes and conversions including initiatives such as our fewer, bigger, better approach in the U.K., in the period, we increased our focus on optimizing the productivity of our existing stores and catchment areas with 48 relocations and conversions completed in the half.

These actions contributed 0.8 percentage points to sales or 40% of the contribution from so-called new space. As you can see on the right-hand side, we have introduced comparable sales as a supplementary sales KPI. We believe this metric provides us and you with a more complete view of like-for-like performance by including all relocated and upsized stores and also a more balanced view, given our traditional like-for-like measure only captures the cannibalization effect on stores in the vicinity of a relocated store. On this basis, comparable sales were down 2% in the half versus like-for-like sales down 2.8%. Given the strategic importance of our ongoing actions to optimize the existing store estate, we consider comparable sales to be a more meaningful and consistent basis for assessing the underlying sales growth of our business.

It's also the metric used by many of our U.S. peers, so it provides better comparability. Over time, we expected to replace our current like-for-like sales measure. Outside of relocations upsizes conversions, we continue to take a disciplined approach to new store openings. In H1, we had 45 net store closures and 106 fewer stores year-on-year. This compares to a sales contribution from net new space of 1.3 percentage points year-on-year or 60% of the contribution from so-called new space. Overall, taking optimization of existing stores and catchment areas together with net new space, the combined benefit to sales of our strategic actions on our store estate was 2.1 percentage points. This compares to a 0.7% net increase in our selling space year-on-year clearly demonstrating improved productivity from our actions.

Moving now to our outlook and guidance for the year. First, with our market outlook. In May, we set out the conditions under which we could see a weaker or indeed on the optimistic side, a stronger market growth outlook this year. We outlined an expectation for market growth to be muted in FY '27, shaped by a weaker spending outlook for our core customer demographic and ongoing product cycle evolution at some of our brand partners, particularly in footwear. Since then, we have seen ongoing geopolitical and macroeconomic volatility, driving a more challenging consumer backdrop.

We saw this particularly as the second quarter progressed, with elevated consumer cost of living pressures alongside a slower environment for high heat footwear product against a highly promotional market backdrop, particularly in the U.S. As a result, and consistent with our Q2 trading statement last month, we have reflected these headwinds persisting into H2 within our view on annual market growth for each key region. We expect North America to be weaker, while our view on Europe and the U.K. is unchanged.

Moving to our guidance for the year. Firstly, within our sales performance, we continue to expect net new space growth to contribute 2% to 3%. On profit before tax and adjusting items, we reiterate our guidance range of GBP 700 million to GBP 800 million. Given the macro and industry backdrop and our 2 biggest trading period yet to come, we believe it's prudent to continue guiding to a wider range. Our free cash flow of GBP 460 million to GBP 520 million is unchanged, underpinned by our ongoing cost and capital discipline. In line with our capital allocation framework and confidence in our medium-term trajectory, we are committed to delivering attractive cash returns to shareholders.

The Board has declared an interim ordinary dividend of 0.4p per share, 21% higher year-on-year, and we are on track to complete the current GBP 200 million share buyback this financial year. We reiterate our confidence in our cumulative free cash flow target of at least GBP 1.4 billion over 3 years, and remain committed to our rolling annual share buyback program.

With my review concluded, let me hand back over to Régis for the business update.

Thank you, Dominic. Let's move now to the business update. Our 5 strategic priorities are the following: strengthening and diversify our product range, driving store productivity and optimization of our fascia portfolio, completing our global e-commerce replatforming, accelerating AI adoption and taking data-driven customer personalization to the next level.

Let me briefly cover AI, data and loyalty before going to the first 3 parts in more details. On AI, our approach is practical and pragmatic. We have 2 priorities. First, how AI can improve our customer experience. Second, how AI can improve our productivity. On the customer experience, we are exploring our customers can discover and buy JD product directly through AI platform. In U.S., we are one of the first retailer to achieve this milestone.

Customers can complete a [indiscernible] shopping journey within the AI platform from discovery to payment, thanks to our partnership with Google, Stripe and Commerce tool. We are actively ramping this up to reach more customers. This is an early example of how shop [indiscernible] are changing. 25% of online shoppers in the U.S. use AI as a primary source of research and recommendation, and also an example of how our technology partnership can help us to stay closer to our customer.

On productivity, we are working on AI deployment across JD full value chain, from inventory replenishment, markdown optimization at the individual store and SKU level and to customer service automation. For example, at EBIT, AI powered voice agents already handled 40% of customer service calls entirely, reducing the cost per service request by around 30%. On inventory replenishment, our merchandising team has developed an AI tool to optimize availability at SKUs store level with a plus 1.5% impact versus the control group. On markdown optimization, we are using AI to analyze stock sales and demand data across our store to identify end of life and broken size inventory to redistribute in order to minimize markdown and maximize sales.

The tool automates a highly complex decision-making process that was previously impractical to perform manually. In the test, we ask AI to process 3.2 million data points per second to deliver an improved sell-through of 70% versus 57% and a net profit of GBP 1 million on this specific test. Early days, but a lot of opportunity to do better what we do for a living, to have the right stock at the right place at the right time and at the right price.

On data, the first step has been to develop our loyalty program. JD STATUS has now passed the 10 million active customers globally. In the first half, status Member account for 40% of JD U.K. in-store revenue. and 45% of all JD U.S. transaction. STATUS member have average order value approximately 20% higher than non-loyalty customer. It gives us the tool to build a strong and unique relationship with our customer with better insight into how they shop.

Those insights will help us to drive our personalization engine and to develop more services, more experience and product for them. For example, in the first half, each targeted communication generate over GBP 1 million in incremental sales against control groups. Early days for us but we have plenty of opportunity to leverage our data, to deliver more sales and profit.

Going back to product, we have shown this slide before. but it's a good illustration of the strength of our model and how product range is evolving and how we capture trends quickly with our agile and multi-brand proposition. In footwear, performance running a newer not sneaker styles are gaining momentum, while relatively small today in our mix, Merigen-Ballast flat, Barena Laffer and brands like Birkenstock AG and Avana are supporting continued growth in the other category.

And the question we ask ourselves, is the future of sneaker revision of a formal shoes? Whatever is the future, we will win with a winner. In running, we have now 2 subcategory, retro running and new running with [indiscernible], all growing very fast, runing clubs and gyms are becoming the new night clubs, health, fitness and well-being are increasingly a priority for our core customers. This shift of customer trend within our running category is helping to offset the year-on-year mix decline in retro basketball and retro football category.

In apparel, performance and street fashion continue to be the standout categories. The data shown on the slide is for the U.K. and Europe, but the direction is consistent across all our regions. In the U.S., our growth in Apparel is fueled by street fashion and our own brands and licensed brand. They represent around 15% of Apparel sales and allow us to respond quickly to new trends and offer companying price points. They also provide structural margin benefits. With products of inevitable elsewhere, we have greater control over our pricing and less exposed to the promotional dynamics that affect the broader market.

We combine the expertise of our industry-leading buyers and merchandisers with insight from thousands of young store colleagues around the world. This keeps us close to how our customers shop and how trends are changing. This is why we are broadening the assortment across athletic leisure, streetwear and performance, more brands, more style and more trends, all carefully curated for the JD customer.

Even more important, we don't just sell brands. We shape what the brand sell. Today, around 50% of our apparel assortment and 30% of our footwear assortment is exclusive to JD. This is a real competitive advantage. We combine our deep customer knowledge, our clear positioning and our scale to work with our brand partners to develop products relevant to our customer and unique to us.

For the brand, we bring something equally important; scale and access to a large, clearly defined customer base. This makes us the #1 strategic partner. And for JD, create differentiation, reduced direct price comparison and give us greater influence over the product we sell. As the market matures, I believe this become even more important. This is why we see exclusive product as a core competitive capability. It makes us unique for our customer and for our brand partners.

The second strategic priority is driving better store productivity. There are 3 parts: optimizing the estate, converting stores where others can perform better within the demographic and continuing with fewer, bigger and better store. As Dominic highlighted, we continue to review every store and invest where we see the best customer and financial returns. At EBIT, we now started the program previously announced to close around 170 lower-performing stores over the 3 years.

In Eastern Europe, we are moving to a franchise model with our partner, sport vision. -- subject to regulatory approvals, stores in existing markets, except Poland will transfer to Sport Vision. And JD will also enter 6 new markets through this capital-light model. In Germany, our restructuring is now complete. We have consolidated to a core estate of 62 stores, providing us with a stronger linear base from which to improve performance. In North America, store conversions are on track. We expect to convert or close all stand-alone Finish Line store by the end of financial year 8, and to complete around 60 city gear conversion this year.

The aim is straightforward, put the strongest fascia in each location and improve the return from the state. In the U.K., we opened JD flagship store in Cardiff and Sheffield and closed 17 stores. This is fewer, bigger and better in practice. Overall, a 0.7% increase in net new space contributed 2.1 percentage points to group sales in the first half, which give us confidence in the strategy. Beyond a [indiscernible] store estate, we are building out our international franchise platform with a focus on driving the JD brand into new and high-growth market.

Further to our work in Eastern Europe, we have signed a long-term agreement with Grupo Axo, Mexico leading omnichannel retail distributor to operate more than 140 JD stores starting in 2027. Mexico is a market of over 130 million people with a rapidly growing activewear sector. This capital-light model accelerates our global reach while remaining consistent with our disciplined approach to investment. Today, we have 83 franchise JD and Courir store in Africa, in Middle East and Asia, with Mexico and Eastern Europe to follow soon, we will move to well over 250 stores soon, supporting our margin and return on capital employed.

Turning to e-commerce. We have now launched new platform in the U.K. and Ireland, following successful implementation last year in North America, Southeast Asia, Italy and our U.K. outdoor business. The remaining European market are on track for the second half. We are already seeing benefit. For example, outdoor online sales progressed well in the year following its move to Shopify in January, enabling more orders fulfilled from stores. Across the group, online organic sales grew by more than 5% and online now represent 20% of our overall sales.

Re-platforming is a foundation not the endpoint. With the benefit of better technology platforms, we are actively exploring and testing e-commerce marketplace proposition across the group to broaden product choice for our customer and using AI to improve product discovery and conversion. We are also exploring social commerce format. For example, [indiscernible] TikTok Shop is already a top 10 account in the U.S. in its category. -- driving meaningful incremental traffic and transaction. A proof point we are looking to build on across our other fascia.

We were also built on the Agentic processing capability now live in the U.S. on the JD fascia. The most important point is that our teams can now test and launch improvements materially faster than before from search through to checkout and post fascia service. while enabling new services and propositions that will propel JD omni-channel offer forward. Our priority for the second half and beyond is clear: drive growth and improve profitability. That requires different action across each of our regions. In North America, we will keep building awareness of the JD brand, supported by store openings and conversion.

Apparel and in particular, in womenswear is one of our biggest growth levers in North America. A stronger apparel proposition drive traffic, basket size, improved margin mix and makes our stores a more distinctive destination. Our apparel penetration in North America is still meaningfully below other regions and closing that gap is a clear priority. More broadly, we are taking action to optimize the store estate in Europe, and we are reducing supply chain and logistic costs. Automation is ramping up our ALN distribution center across both stores and customer fulfillment. We have now won down our smaller Belgium distribution facility.

In the U.K., fewer, bigger and better continue to be our priority alongside cost productivity. We are starting to see encouraging results from our work to improve our outdoor business, while our Gym business continued to perform strongly. Across all regions, we will maintain the same cost and capital discipline that support us in the first half. And for North America and Europe, in particular, the ongoing development of our omnichannel and loyalty offers are key driver of our plans to grow our market share, sales and profitability.

Overall, and in a more normalized market environment, the biggest margin opportunity is in Europe, where our action on stores, supply chain and digital should support a much healthier operating profit over the medium term. We also see a clear opportunity in North America, where we have grown to nearly GBP 5 billion of annual sales in less than 10 years. In the U.K., our focus is to maintain our full year '26 margin through productivity and cost discipline.

To conclude, this was a resilient sales performance in the first half despite a difficult market. We stay close to our customer and maintain tight control of cost and capital. We made tangible progress on our strategic priorities, broadening the product range, improving the store estate, completing more of the e-commerce re-platforming and scaling AI and royalty. Our agile multi-brand model and growing own brand offer is helping us respond as footwear and apparel trends change, while online continued to grow supported by our new technology platform.

Tight cost discipline means that we held our like-for-like OpEx flat year-on-year, and our balance sheet is stronger with net cash improving by nearly GBP 300 million year-on-year after GBP 260 million of cash returned to shareholders. Our full year guidance is unchanged from the Q2 trading statement. Against a challenging backdrop, we are controlling the controllable. We are broadening and strengthening our product proposition with more brands, more trends and more exclusive product.

We are improving the productivity of our stores and our capital, and we are building a much stronger digital and data capability to understand our customer better and serve them better. At the same time, we remain disciplined on cost and capital, while continuing to generating strong cash and invest behind the area where we see the greatest returns. That is what gives me confidence and put us in a strong place to deliver sustainable growth and stronger profitability over time in a more normal market environment.

Before we move to Q&A, I want to thank all our colleagues around the world for their continued hard work and focus. Thank you. We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Jonathan Pritchard with Peel Hunt..

We're unable to hear Jonathan, so we'll come back to you shortly. We can hear you now. Please go ahead. We'll move on Jonathan and come back to you shortly.

Our next question will come from Nick Barker with BNP.

Just 2 from me. Firstly, on the replatforming in the U.K. I was just wondering if you can give us a bit more color as to what is what's happened to conversion there and where it's had the greatest impact? That's the first one. And then secondly, I noted that you're maintaining the sort of free cash flow guidance for lowering CapEx slightly. I was wondering if you could take us through the moving parts of that.

Thank you for the question. I will take the platforming and Dominic will answer the free cash flow. Re-platform in U.K. In fact, it's not only one re-platforming is that we have re-platform outdoor business, so which is 4 brands, as you know, moving out of our existing platform to Shopify and we did that in January. And from that time, our sales in total outdoor are up 25% year-on-year. So definitely, it's moving to increase the conversion and increasing our sales. And that has been in line with a great -- a very good first half for outdoor business.

So it has proved to be beneficial not only to our online business, but to our client. For U.K. for JD, it's too early to say. It's happened in August. So I think that the first thing we are seeing is some some good improvement in terms of the conversion, especially on the checkout page, but early days. So we'll update you at the end of the year.

I will let Dominic answer your question on cash.

Yes. So our guidance on free cash flow is unchanged from where we may. I think it's fair to say there's an element of conservatism in our position of the May numbers. So notwithstanding a slightly lower profit expectation and guidance. We updated in August, we're still confident of delivering the free cash flow. You pointed to CapEx, yes, slightly down GBP 350 million to GBP 400 million against our guidance of GBP 400 million at the year-end. I think it just reflects our highly disciplined approach to where we spend our money on CapEx.

We continue to invest in the business. as I and Régis spoke about in our presentations, our store CapEx increasingly around 40% is on invested in new state. We continue to invest in new space but in a slightly softer market, our criteria to the margins, there were slightly fewer new stores and we feel comfortable between at this point in time. So that all flows through to slightly lower CapEx spend for the year. And then overall, we see an improved position on working capital outflow this year compared to last year. So all of those factors flow through to underpinning our free cash flow guidance.

Our next question will come from Richard Taylor with Barclays.

Can you tell us what you're thinking strategically -- just a question really on range. Can you tell us what you're thinking strategically about product? What's your biggest brand partner goes through a weaker innovation period? Are you willing to make more significant action on backing brands that currently have momentum? Versus sort of waiting for a turnaround. And aligned to this, can you talk us through about your exclusives? I think you mentioned 50% on the call. Is this higher or lower with some of the higher-growth brands?

And then a separate question on inventory. I see it's around 2% constant currency. This is sales down 1% or so. I really you've had back-to-school. So interested on what inventory would have been excluding that sort of timing difference. But just more about how you're thinking about inventory going forward, given expectations of lower like-for-like sales growth in the second half from consensus? So I guess inventory is still up, but the outlook look great. This is still reflect oversupply products in the industry.

Okay. I will take the first 2, and Dominic, you will go through the inventory. Range, we are not waiting for for anything. We are -- we have been the first one to implement on in the U.K. We had exclusivity for almost last year. So it has been building the own brand in the U.K. and in Europe. So I think we -- as I always say, we are -- we are selling to our customers what they want to buy. And if they want to buy Nike, we propose Nike, they want to buy or if they want to buy [indiscernible]yes. So merchandising is to be flexible. As you know, we don't sell our space contrary to some of the retailer space is fully flexible as we don't sell the space.

So we have a full flexibility and I think our assortment is moving linked to the trends and nothing else than the trends and the appetite for our customer portion products. And we believe that we are well placed and our market share, in fact, is higher with some of the new brands and it is with our #1 brand. So it's replaced that. And our return on space is the same -- is higher with with Nike and it is with other brands showing that we are investing for the other brands. So all of that shows that we are not waiting anything, and they're just acting and moving our range with the trends and with our customer base.

In terms of exclusivity, it's pretty stable. It's around 30% in Footwear, 50% in apparel. In fact, it is more with other brands than it is with Nike. This is where we -- so there is no difference in the way we operate with different brands. So we operate on the same -- with the same playbook, which is around how we make sure that we have a distinctive, unique offer for our customer. And that's the way we work with all of the brands. So there is no difference between one plan to another one.

There is brands will have more agile than other brands and that gives us more ability to have exclusivity and some brands are more respectful or having a more tight distribution policies than other brands. So that differs, but our strategy is the same, is how we define products that are the best for our customers and how we do that in partnership with the brands. And we are the #1 partner for most of the brands. So our size of business means that we are the #1, #2 partner for all the brands [indiscernible] in any of our positioning with the brand. And we continue to develop as our sales has been more -- the big difference between footwear and apparel why it is higher exclusive because it's it's a more agile production type and that gives us the ability to react more quickly.

And I think that you have seen our performance in apparel a muted market. That's a bit great performance, which is a tribute to the quality of what we're doing when we have the full flexibility that we don't have in footwear because of the difficulty to change more than the way you produce footwear as quickly as we would like to. But I think the ratio, we are working in the same way with all brands. Inventory?

Yes. Richard. Yes, so our stock was up 2% like-for-like on a year-on-year basis. It's difficult to be precise about exactly what the back-to-school impact of that is. But it's true to say that the North America as a whole back-to-school was delayed, Labor Day was a week later and all that things backward. So we feel comfortable that at the end of the first half in terms of where our stock position is. But I think, as you know well, we've got a good track record of managing our stock quickly. We buy tightly -- managed to turn it over well. We've got the biggest period to come, obviously been through back-to-school. We have Black Friday and peak Christmas is the key period where managing our stock through the year will come to show how strong we are in that area. .

The market position, yes, there is a lot of stock out there. It's often the case with a softer period. I don't think we see that materially changing through the first half. We've seen a [indiscernible] environment. That has resulted in price investment we take and we expect that to continue through the second half. So I don't think we see any material change from where we get in the first half through the second half in terms of stock positioning in this industry as a whole. And impact on our margin base.

Our next question will come from Anne Critchlow with Berenberg.

I've got one of the question, please, on the online replatforming. I think U.S. online sales grew quite strongly as a result of the new app. And I just wondered what the impact was in your view? And whether you expect to benefit on U.K. online sales in the second half?

Yes. So I think you're right, we grew in the U.S. quite strongly online. I think that what we have seen is a faster shakeout, especially the 1 page shakeout to increase our conversion on this part. So I think we are expecting the same in Europe when we will go through the full implementation of the new platform. So that should benefit U.K., but I think that the most important is appetite for the consumer. So we are not expecting that to be revolutionary. I think it's more an evolution and it's more -- it gives us a lot of option long term.

We were not able to click and collect same day in our store because of our whole platform but not a good marketplace. There's plenty of limitations that we have limited to and that should help us to grow our digital business in the coming 18 to 24 months. It will not be big and it's moving double right away. But I think it's more a midterm consuming growth from our online penetration.

Our next question will come from Richard Chamberlain with RBC.

A couple of questions, please. I guess one thing that surprised me reading the statement today was that you said that the statutory gross margin decline was partially offset by higher marketing contribution. So I would have thought in a more subdued demand environment, marketing contributions might be down. So I guess it would be helpful if you could explain what's going on there, what's driving that increase? That's the first one.

And then the second one was, was there a positive margin mix effect -- gross margin mix effect in the first half from the outperformance of apparel versus footwear?

Okay. So the mix, as you know, margin is similar. So there is no mix really impact because our margin in both categories are very similar. So I don't know you will -- there is no element of that. And the second -- on the first one, I think when market is tough, you need to create demand. So you need to invest in marketing. And I think that we have been able to capture more of that from the brand because they want to create demand, they want to create appetite they know that JD customer is the most important to create the trends and to create that.

So I think they have diverted some money that they have for the brand or for the way of promoting the product to us and that is a reflection of that. It's a reflection of our size and our scale. So that's the 2 elements that is driving our increased marketing contribution from the brand. I think that in a tough market, you select the best retailer, and we are the best retailer.

Our next question will come from Jonathan Pritchard with Peel Hunt.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Sorry, guys. Firstly, on recognition in the U.S., could you just give a bit more color on that, perhaps, please? Then following up on Richard's question on the gross margin, [indiscernible] will be in the second half. Can you perhaps give us a bit of guidance as to whether those marketing contributions will continue or what the underlying investment will be -- and then lastly, should we look upon FY '27 as a trough year. What are your early thoughts on FY '28? .

Okay. Remind me the first question. I didn't get.

Brand recognition.

Brand recognition and Dominic [indiscernible] So brand recognition in the U.S., I think that we continue -- I think the main driver of JD brand recognition because that's the one you were talking about is linked to our storage state and to the increase of our store estate. We have -- we have done a fantastic job in New York, and we see that, and it's a very influential and very important market. And we see that our growth and and we see the brand recognition going up.

The rest of U.S., we are doing city by city, key market by key markets because it will be wrong to try to to do all U.S. in one go. So it's linked to the conversion and to opening program, but we are making good progress. And we're looking forward to show you how this -- this is on the field when we go to San Florida in October.

Thank you, Régis. And Jonathan, on your other 2 questions. On gross margin, our strategy gross margin was down 20 basis points. That does reflect to dynamics. As we've been saying, we have made targeted price investments to remain competitive. That's around 50 basis points impact in the half. for new space like-for-like, like-for-like, down about 60 basis points. And that's been offset by the marketing contributions that Régis spoke about those earlier on. In our own internal accounts, -- we look at those as being netted up against the marketing spend we made in OpEx, with IFRS, we have to put those in marketing.

So in the first half, down 20 basis points, 50 basis points investment in price offset by about 30 basis points on marketing contributions. I think as you look forward to the second half, we're not seeing anything change the price investment that we'll need to make as we go through H2. So I think around that at least 50 basis points, I would say, remains a valid assumption to roll forward. There are likely to be some marketing contribution. It's very difficult at this stage to say exactly what those will be as we build those campaign in our brands in the second half. So I think the underlying point is to roll forward the underlying price investment through the rest of the year.

In terms of looking at FY '28, well, we still have the biggest part of our FY '27 to go. So we haven't yet prepared our budgets for FY '28 to support what we see how the second half trends persist and how we see a particular peak season through December performing. Having said that, I think if you look at the top line overall, I don't think we see anything today that will result in a material change in the macro environment in the consumer environment or indeed in the footwear side going to FY '28, no particular bullet there change things materially.

We do continue to invest in space, both improving our existing store estate and new space. And I think maintaining a 2% to 3% uplift from that is sensible approach. Inflation continues. I mean we're all seeing inflation starting to increase a bit now. So I think that's one that we're monitoring closely. Clearly, we're taking a lot of actions around we offset that, such as the winter clearly be a hard way we need to work on. So I think for us at this point in time, too early to be definitive about FY '28, but continuing to focus on controlling and controllables that we're doing less to ensure that we enter next year and the best position possible.

Our next question will come from Anubhav Malhotra with Panmure Liberum.

Just 2 questions for me, please, if you don't mind. Firstly, just digging deeper into the gross margin and gross margin, if I look by divisions. I mean, it's sporting goods and outdoors, the margin -- gross margin over there rose 200 basis points. Just maybe a bit of color on what's driving the increase there? And is that something that we should expect to be repeated in the second half because that was clearly offset from JD Sport, the JD segment margin going down 60 basis points and complementary at least, you're going down 30 basis points in the first half.

And then secondly, on the franchisee model decision in Eastern Europe, 70 stores are getting transferred there. Maybe a bit more color on the driver of this decision. And if there are any other geographies you may be looking to do the same in -- and also what should we expect in terms of any cash consideration from that? And were these loss-making stores and the sale would be kind of accretive to earnings or not really?

Okay. I will take the franchise one, and Dominic need to take the gross margin. You start.

Yes, I'll start with the gross margin. So Anubhav, good to hear from you. I think what you picked up in the middle of that is our sporting goods businesses in Europe, outdoors to the U.K., Sprintersports an IB and [indiscernible] Greece have had a good first half. And I think what that reflects is a proposition that is putting more value proposition overall, a more commodity proposition that's responding and resonating very well with customers at the moment. And I think that shows the diversity of our business model alongside the sports fashion business. That allows us to sell in a good full price to our customer set. And also our businesses in Greece and outdoors have done a really good job over the last 12 months of including their stock position which has allowed them to put more newness in front customers.

We see it particularly in our outdoor business. And a good old-fashion retail, if you put newest to customers, improve your stock, you see your gross margin improve. So I think on an annual basis, as we go into second half that will persist. Overall, for the group, I think the answer I gave to Jonathan earlier on is that when you look at the balance between sports fashion and [indiscernible] products, particularly footwear product cycle that we are seeing versus the relatively smaller sporting goods, the overall price investment underlying at around 50 basis points through the year is only the best place to think about at the group level.

And concerning franchise, I think it's a very good question. So when I look at the group, and we are being clear where we want to operate by ourselves and where we don't want to operate ourselves. And I think it's linked to a multiple mainly 3 factors. The first one is around size of the market. The second one is around complexity to operate in the market. And the third one is around our ability to operate in a market on the property and some of the -- call [indiscernible] if you take Eastern Europe, the first element is a small market. It's a complex additional small market with a different language, online in Europe, some are not in Europe, so different currency.

And I think that it's a reflection here which is a reflection that are happening at the group level, which is how we -- to the best of the 2 worlds localized and leverage our scale. And when you look at Eastern Europe, we definitely didn't localize. And to be fair, it's difficult for me to play into a team. When the team is looking after big market, looking after a small market, it's not the priority. And in some of the markets, we are doing less than or much less than what we're doing in one store in Trafford. So that is a reflection around it.

And at the same moment, those markets require love and thunder as much as any market and require adaptation to the local customer. So that's why we believe the best of the two worlds is having a local partner through franchise and at the same moment, leveraging our scale. And I think the great thing is that provision already operated to those markets for a long time. It's a big business in those markets, with a big and a very successful sporting goods business.

And they had an equivalent of JD or a copy of JD, which is called [indiscernible] they recognize that our expertise is worth doing a partnership. And that's -- that's what we're doing. So it's the best of the two worlds at with the best format and the best concept that exists in our industry, which is JD and at the same moment, been able to localize through partners that live and breathe those small countries. And that's the strategy behind that.

In terms of financial, the way it works is that we would have an inflow of cash because we will stop to to have stock for those countries, and that will come gradually because we have placed orders. So the stock will go to our sport vision, and we will sell the stock to sport vision in the coming months. So that will have an impact in the coming 6, 9 months. In terms of working cap, there will be an impact on our on the assets that we have because we also -- we are selling our assets in those countries to support digital. So that will have a positive impact in terms of our cash flow and reduce our our cash, but at group level is not significant.

And in terms of profit, we were, I would say, breakeven on those countries. So we will make a profit where we were we were breakeven. So it will not be very material for the group, but I think it shows the strategy around how we get the best of the two worlds, more localization fewer assets, focusing on key markets and at the same moment, having a global reach to our customers through the best concept that exists in the industry through franchise.

Our next question will come from Grace Smalley with Morgan Stanley.

My first one would just be near term on current trading. I appreciate you don't comment specifically, and we have your trading update in November. But could you just remind us about how we should think about quantifying the back-to-school shift in the U.S. between the second and third quarter. And is it fair to think that overall underlying trading trends, excluding that back-to-school shift remain broadly unchanged? Or there -- any other puts and takes you should be considering when thinking about modeling our Q3 like-for-like?

And then a follow-up question, please, on the industry imagery and promotional dynamics. So Dominic, I think you mentioned like still excess inventories out there and that continues in terms of the promotional environment into the second half, similarly to H1. I know I appreciate you don't have a match it all, but would you -- what do you think is a reasonable time line for the industry to work through the excess inventories that are out there in the trade?

And is there a risk that this could be a continued overhang into next year? And any kind of color you could provide in terms of where you see pockets of excess inventory in terms of any specific product categories or regions would be helpful. And then, sorry, I have a third, which is also a follow-up. Just on your comments on fiscal '28. Again, I know you're not guiding specifically, but it seemed from your earlier comments that there's no kind of obvious immediate inflection on the macro side or in terms of the footwear lifestyle product cycle.

Just wondering on product, specifically, as you're looking at like building your order books into next year and the feedback from buyers that have seen kind of the brands product for next year in the showrooms, just what are the puts and takes you're seeing in terms of product category drivers that we should think of going into next year?

Okay. I will do the last 2 and Dominic will do the first. 2028, I think I will not explain more than Dominic, asking that -- on your specific question around how we look around I think that we have not seen on macro. There is no element that say that there is something very different than what we've seen today. So I think we are not expecting something new. We continue to see the trends around running and continue the investment around there, where we continue to in the same momentum around the key brands. So there's nothing that has dramatically changed, and we don't see something dramatically changing. Don't forget it takes time to build franchise and it takes time to get. I think the best example is at Salomon XT6, we start with XT6 4 years ago. I remember I was there and we say we're going to push on on. And it has taken 3 years to get to something which is starting to be meaningful and they're starting to really look at a key franchise worldwide.

So it takes time. And I think you need to not forget. It's not -- if you scale the franchise to quickly, you kill it right away. And whoever you are, if customers need time to be franchise. And I think XT6 is for me the best example. It's a key franchise. It's now part of our and it's working everywhere, but it has taken 4 years to get at what is today a significant choose. And it will not be right for any brand to believe that you can do in 1 year launching a franchise and scaling that will destroy its franchise. And we have seen that every time from the brand to go to scale too quickly, they keep the franchise they want to do.

So this is -- this is about fashion. This is about fashion trends and that need to be nurtured, to be developed at the speed that is in line with the consumer. So no big change for 2028 as we speak today. In terms of the industry, I think your question is a good question around promotion. I think it will stop to be promotional when everyone recognize what we said 2 years ago, which is a maturing market. When people will stop to believe that it is a double-digit market, they will start to buy stupidly and too much. And I think that our key competitor has been great in doing the wrong thing, which is to say everything will go [indiscernible] September.

We were proved to be right at that time you were looking at that saying, I think that -- so this is -- as soon as everyone recognizes that this is an industry that is maturing, sneaker is the best shoes in the world, is the most popular shoes in the world, but it is now 60% or 55% of the market. So that means that the double-digit growth that we experimented in the last 10 years would not happen. And I think that -- as soon as everyone recognizes that, they will start to buy for a market that doesn't exist. And that means that you will not have excess stock. So that's as simple as that.

So it's we are in that place, and you have seen how disciplined we are in our buy. We need the industry to localize the same and to be as disciplined as we are.

And Grace, just to come back on the back-to-school point. I'm not going to give specific numbers on that. It would be serious to receive it had a small impact. I think the bigger point to bear in mind is what we said is we don't really see the underlying market conditions changing from Q2 into Q3 and Q4 around where we are at cycle, where our consumer is and the result in promotional backdrop that we're operating into. I think those are the most key factors.

Our next question will come from David Hughes with Shore Cap.

A couple from me. Firstly, just in terms of capital allocation. Obviously, you've increased the dividend payout this year. In terms of your dividend coverage, you've still got quite a lot of capacity there. Do you have a target coverage or a target yield that you're looking to get to in terms of shareholder returns? And then secondly, in terms of kind of the opportunity in Mexico that you recently announced, Obviously, you're planning the 140 stores as a first blush. How much do you think you kind of potentially could get to in the medium term, do you have an outlook there that you're targeting?

Dominic will do the capital and I will do...

Mexico is actually capital allocation. So -- it's a very good question. And I think our dividend increase of 21% really reflects the increase in the dividend that we made for the full year last year where we updated our capital allocation policy. And clearly, beyond investing in the business, we continue to do maintaining leverage headroom for the buyout of Genesis production in 2 to 3 years' time.

Beyond that, shareholder distribution is a key part of our of our overall strategy and capital allocation. We have a rolling GBP 200 million share buyback, and that is -- we're well through that for this particular year. And at the full year, we said that we grow our dividend in a progressive way over time to get to be -- to have a yield in line with the sector. Now I think you know that the sector is around 2-plus percent but below last at the moment. We're not rushing to that, but we around a 20% increase in the full year dividend last year, you can see our intent and we look deliver that over time.

Mexico side. I was waiting. So Mexico, so 140 stores. I think the main opportunities, not the number of store is the size of the store. I think that what we are taking over is small store. It was a tough branded. It was only footwear. And the project is around creating a very distinct offer. And I think this is where it's very interesting for you because it shows how they didn't need us because they already existing, they already have all the brands and all that stuff, but they believe that the JD format is a much more for full format and much more sustainable format, and they wanted to invest and to pay us royalty in order to get access to our knowledge or [indiscernible].

And I think that's sure you have our strong in proposition and concept and how we we are able to create value. So that's the purpose of the axle feels that we were adding much more value to the proposition than the current propositions that they had. And in terms of number of stores, I don't think it's a lot more store, but it's definitely bigger, better store. And that's what we are embarking on is to extend to create a real destination a real offer where you are footwear and Apparel together, which create a distinctive concept and really average position. So that's all about the project.

Our next question will come from Kate Calvert with Investec.

Just 2 for me. The first question, again, on Mexico, and I suppose following on from your answer to the Eastern European franchise. I suppose Mexico is actually a very large market. So could you sort of talk about your thinking behind why you went in by franchise rather than perhaps using your own expertise from some of your U.S. formats like Shoe Palace and doing it yourself because, obviously, it is a very attractive long-term market. .

And my second question is just on North America. I was quite interested reduced on your comments that you had a good opportunity in the U.S. for womenswear. This is an area that JD has struggled in the U.K. historically. Do you think your sort of consumer perception of JD brand is slightly different over there in terms of being slightly more female friendly? Or are you sort of thinking of doing something slightly different versus what you've been doing in the U.K. and Europe.

Thank you, Kate. Good question. Mexico, as I said, there is [indiscernible], you right size is there. The access to property is not there. So if you are not a local player, you not access properties. So that has been a easy to do business or not. And it's not always easy to do business in Mexico, currency, security. So that's the 2 [indiscernible]. So there is criteria -- criteria is definitively on the on doing by ourselves. But on the property access and on the way to do business, it definitely a franchise market for us, and that's why. And it's interesting when you talk with American colleague they see Mexico as a difficult -- a very difficult price there.

We're not rushing to the there because they have the opportunity to buy it. And [indiscernible] another franchise and a strong strong model as JD to go there. But -- so it's definitely that -- which is the same as Indonesia, same as Philippines, same as South Africa, the same as Middle East. It's all this countries where we believe that it's much better to have local partners than to operate by ourselves.

In terms of the Womenswear I think we see the 6 in U.K., we have done a very good job to to increase our range in Womenswear. And I think that in U.K. proved to be beneficial, the same as we do in the U.S. It's all about banning the speed to market. And I think we were -- we had a model that was too slow. That was right for men. Men are boring, but women need more change and more diversity. And I think that we have built this model with very successfully with Adidas with to every 6 weeks, which is something that I used to do when I was working with Zara.

So I think we are finding the recipe, and it's not -- it's all about product and all about the ability to connect. And I think that we have a good connection with a woman customer in shoe product in U.S. and that is where we are investing and that we are seeing some really very good results in the last 12 months.

Our next question will come from Wendy Lu. [Operator Instructions]

Can you hear me okay?

Yes, Yes.

I just have a quick follow-up question from Greg's question earlier. On footwear growth, I wanted to understand what is required for footwear go back to growth. I guess 2 questions here. One is, how do you feel about newness coming from major brands over the next couple of months and quarters? Two is, I think you mentioned that the industry probably is too complacent on building inventories from footwear, but you seem to be relatively, I think, comfortable with your future inventory.

I was wondering if you can comment on, I guess, how do you feel about your footwear inventory, both from -- in terms of size and value, but also in terms of composition?

Yes, I think that we feel will not say something different. We feel good. But this is if we always have too much of the things that is not good enough and not enough of the good selling. So this is about retail. But we are in a normal position where, yes, I wish to have a little bit more some of the products, and I wish to have a little bit [indiscernible] manage, and this is what we have managed successfully in the last 10 years. And I think that our track record around managing inventory is there.

In terms of the industry for footwear Yes, I think it's a good question. I think the first thing is what you said before, which is -- and what we said before is to have a good stock position in the industry because you have too much of something and as it is today, you have discount and customer waiting for the next one to come because it's interesting to see that in Europe and Europe U.K. is mostly driven by lower ATV, so lower average value that is driving the the slightly positive in U.K., in fact, in the gate in Europe.

But this is mostly around the average value which I think is about a reflection of 2 things. There is too much product on so they will position and they don't buy the things and some appetite about something new and exciting because at that moment, paying [indiscernible] man is a the shoes you want. So it's a little bit of 2. In U.S., it's more around highest product and the fact that there are products that everyone wants to buy and are rushing too. So I think it's about creating the heat in the industry, but the main element stop the promotional activity where a customer can wait for next month to get a better deal, and that is I think for me, the first element.

And after that, it will come. We know it's always helpful when there is it created by the market leader, which is not today the case. -- but we see some great things happening. You have seen what we have seen during the summer with [indiscernible] for aDidas. We are seeing that with on coil, we are seeing that through Salomon 66. So there is an element of that. It's true that in the market leader been in a leading position, especially in the U.S. it is part of the recipe to other market that is in a better shape.

Well, there are no further questions on the webinar, so I'll now hand back over to management for closing remarks.

So thank you for your question. So we please to have it in person, but I hope you will enjoy Adidas innovation there. I was talking with Jon and Matthew yesterday. So was very stressed to make sure that they showcase in the best way possible innovation and running. So I hope you enjoy your day in [indiscernible] and looking forward to see you next time in person. Thank you.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm Régis Schultz, CEO of JD Group, and I'm joined here today by Dominic Platt, our CFO; and also very happy to introduce Jetan Chowk, our Chief Technology Officer, who is on our Q&A panel.

So the agenda for the day is the following. I will start with our key message and highlights for the year. Then I will hand over to Dominic to go through the financials and guidance. And finally, I will take you through the key business update.

For today, I have five key message.

First, everything starts with the consumer. We are offering our customers the latest and the greatest towards fashion product in our vibrant and elevated retail theater. This customer-first approach, combined with cost and capital control delivered a resilient performance for JD against a tough trading environment.

Second, we are pleased, I'm going too quickly, sorry. Second, we are pleased with our momentum in North America with a 3.2% organic growth, which is comparable to our main competitor definition of like-for-like. We have invested further in the JD brand and made significant operational improvement across the region. North America is now our first region in terms of sales and in terms of profit.

Third, our free cash flow is up 36% year-on-year to GBP 462 million, supported by a 3% increase in our operating cash flow, which is the equivalent to EBITDA under old fashion accounting rules. In FY 2026, we reached GBP 12.7 billion turnover. It's compared to GBP 8.6 billion in 2022, achieving double-digit growth per year. We are now a double-digit market share in all our markets, North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and U.K. And our profit for FY '26 is GBP 852 million, which is down GBP 100 million versus FY '22, but our operating cash flow is up by GBP 200 million compared to 2022.

This reflects the investment we had to make in staff costs to give our young colleagues an equal remuneration, in governance and in infrastructure, supply chain, cybersecurity system in what was an under-invested business.

Fourth, given our strong cash generation, which we expect will continue, we are announcing today a proposed 20% dividend increase for FY '26 and a rolling GBP 200 million annual share buyback. Finally, our FY '27 guidance is all about controlling the controllable and for the consumer, advancing our five key strategic priority at pace. I will take you through each of these later.

Let me now hand over to Dominic to run through the financial results.

Good morning, everybody. Good to see you all, and thank you, Régis. I'll start with our headline financials. I'll start with our headline financials here on Slide 5.

Unless stated otherwise, all commentary is on a constant currency basis. Total sales were up 11.7%, reflecting a full year of sales from Hibbett and Courir, which were acquired in July and November, respectively, in the prior year. As a reminder, we have restated our prior year gross margin following a reclassification between OpEx and cost of sales of certain costs related to commercial activities and logistics. This is to reflect a more appropriate accounting presentation. And as a result, FY '25 gross margin has moved from 47.8% to 47%.

In FY '26, against a tough market backdrop in all our regions, we maintained our trading discipline. To stay competitive and engage with our customers, throughout the year, we made controlled price investments, particularly in our online offer. The underlying impact of these investments was a reduction of 30 basis points. This was fully offset by marketing contributions, which were higher year-on-year. The corresponding marketing costs that are funded by these contributions are now classified in OpEx for accounting presentation purposes. So overall, statutory gross margin was therefore flat year-on-year.

Operating costs were 14.6% higher, driven by costs related to organic new stores and the annualization of Hibbett and Courir. Excluding these items, like-for-like operating costs were flat year-on-year. More on that later.

Overall, the group's operating profit, including lease interest was GBP 886 million, 4% lower with an operating margin of 7%. Profit before tax and adjusting items was GBP 852 million, 6.4% lower and in line with the guidance provided in our Q4 trading update.

Our adjusted earnings per share were 5.5% lower on a reported basis at 11.71p. For completeness, statutory PBT was GBP 629 million, 12% lower year-on-year. This reflects slightly higher adjusting items year-on-year, which consists mainly of noncash impairment costs arising from actions we are taking to optimize the portfolio. Régis will cover this in more detail later.

We generated free cash flow of GBP 462 million, up GBP 123 million or 36% year-on-year, and this was supported by our cost and capital discipline. Reflecting this strength, the Board has proposed a total ordinary dividend of 1.2p per share, 20% higher year-on-year.

So moving now to our sales bridge year-on-year. The left-hand side rebases FY '25 for an FX headwind of 1.2 percentage points as well as for some small disposals from last year. Like-for-like sales were 2.1% lower. Net new space contributed 4.2 percentage points of sales. This demonstrates the productivity of our new space despite the net closure of 39 stores year-on-year. And as a reminder, in line with most retailers, we include store relocations and upsizes in our new space definition. When you're benchmarking, it's worth noting that some of our peers do not.

Net space growth was supported by the opening of five flagship JD stores, including the Trafford Center in Manchester, where we continue to see very strong results. Overall, organic sales growth was 2.1%. Based on our analysis, leveraging internal resources, external panels and peer data, we believe this is at least in line with the growth of our addressable markets. And completing the bridge, Hibbett and Courir added GBP 1.1 billion of sales for an overall sales growth of 11.7%.

As you can see on this slide, the JD Group is a well-balanced, diversified and global business. 75% of our sales come from North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, and we have significant runway to further grow our market shares in these regions. Our channel mix varies by region with online sales penetration in the U.K. at just over 25%, around 20% in North America and in the high teens in Europe and Asia Pacific. This provides ample opportunity for growth, particularly outside the U.K. As Régis will touch on later, we've made significant progress in building out our fully flexible omnichannel proposition, and we're strengthening our ecosystem to meet customers wherever and however they choose to shop.

Organic store sales grew by 2.2%, reflecting the continued resilience of our full price model and our store opening program. Online sales were up 1% with good growth in North America and Europe, supported by the ongoing evolution of our ranging and technology platforms. In the U.K., online sales were down in a more promotional market, reflecting near-term industry and consumer dynamics.

Turning now to category. Our agile multi-brand, multi-category model provides natural diversification through our footwear, apparel and accessories proposition. In footwear, organic sales were flat year-on-year. Throughout FY '26, we saw a significant shift in the global footwear product cycle, given the transition between newer but smaller franchises and larger end-of-cycle lines. Reflecting the strength of our model, we saw strong growth across brands more in the middle of their product cycles with further support from newer footwear categories that Régis will touch on later.

In apparel, organic sales grew by 5%, driven by our broad and energized proposition as we continue to enhance our assortment across athleisure, performance and streetwear. We believe there's significant scope for growth in this category, particularly in North America, where our apparel mix is low compared to other regions. Despite stronger organic sales growth in apparel, the category sales mix reflects the full year sales from Hibbett and Courir, both of which are more footwear-centric than our other group faces.

Quickly touching on our smaller categories in accessories, a lot of which is actually apparel, such as baseball caps and socks, organic sales were up 11%, driven by strong growth in our sporting goods businesses. And other, which includes outdoor living equipment and JD Gyms memberships, maintained its share of 3% of our sales mix.

Turning now to our geographic regions and starting with North America. While like-for-like sales were 1.8% lower, we saw an improved performance through the year with a return to like-for-like growth in Q4, supported by disciplined execution against its trading plans and strong online sales growth.

Excluding the stand-alone Finish Line business, where we continue to make progress with the ongoing wind down, like-for-like sales were 1.2% up for the year. Operating margin was 250 basis points lower year-on-year with the wind down of Finish Line, a significant but short-term factor.

Finish Line continued to invest in price within its online offer to main competitiveness, and it was a primary source of promotionality amongst our faces. The lower operating margin was also driven by continued investment to strengthen the long-term positioning of JD, which continues to grow brand awareness through the year.

And finally, we had a full year of Hibbett in the numbers, which is a slightly lower margin business than our other key North American faces, particularly following conversion to IFRS. Integration work across Hibbett and our other fascias, including JD, progressed well in the year, supported by procurement, technology and supply chain and logistics efficiencies. We're therefore on track to deliver annualized cost synergies of over $25 million across FY '26 and FY '27.

Turning to Europe. The region delivered like-for-like sales of minus 1.2% ahead of the group, driven by good growth across our sporting goods businesses and a resilient performance at JD and supported by online sales growth. Europe's operating margin was up 20 basis points, benefiting from cost efficiencies across retail, online and supply chain operations, including the ramping up of automation at JD's Heerlen distribution center.

This was partially offset by our controlled price investments, particularly in the online offer, which supported better traffic and conversion. As a reminder, we expect over GBP 20 million of cost benefits across FY '27 and FY '28 as technology and supply chain double running costs unwind.

And finally, in the U.K., we saw weaker sales against a tough consumer backdrop, particularly in the online channel. Organic sales, the more relevant sales KPI given our ongoing transition to fewer, bigger, better stores, were down 2.5% for the year. The U.K. operating margin was 70 basis points lower year-on-year, largely due to operating cost deleverage impacts.

Briefly touching on Asia Pacific, which delivered like-for-like sales growth of 0.4% and organic sales growth of 8.5%. Performance was supported by resilience in footwear and growth in apparel and online. Operating margin was 100 basis points lower as the business invested in infrastructure to support its store expansion program.

So, taking a look now at the profit bridge on Slide 9. Please note that for the purposes of underlying analysis, I have netted off the marketing contributions in gross margin against the corresponding marketing costs within OpEx, which is reflective of how we manage and report the business internally.

Starting from the left-hand side, which rebases FY '25 to account for translation FX. The underlying like-for-like gross margin reduction of 30 basis points was the equivalent of GBP 34 million. Our like-for-like sales performance at a constant gross margin contributed GBP 63 million. And note that, that's net of GBP 49 million of attributable variable OpEx savings.

The next bar shows like-for-like OpEx increases of GBP 85 million, primarily driven by inflation in our labor costs, including higher salaries and national insurance rates as well as technology investments. Through our strong focus on cost management, we delivered GBP 45 million of structural OpEx savings through labor efficiencies, productivity initiatives and operational synergies.

And combining this with the GBP 49 million of variable OpEx savings, we were therefore able to fully offset like-for-like OpEx increases. Rolling through from H1, we had a noncash mark-to-market charge of GBP 10 million, and we expect most of this to unwind in FY '27. The contribution from new stores and annualizations was GBP 43 million, and Hibbett and Courir added GBP 66 million.

And finally, we saw a GBP 20 million increase in the net finance expense, excluding lease interest. This was largely due to interest on the debt component of our acquisition financing.

On this next slide, we set out our summary cash flows for the year. Starting with our statutory PBT of GBP 629 million. Depreciation and amortization was GBP 966 million, up GBP 180 million year-on-year, reflecting the annualization of acquisitions and investment in our stores and supply chain. Lease repayments were GBP 508 million.

As a result, the group's operating cash flow was a little over GBP 1.3 billion for the year, up 3.3%. This metric is essentially EBITDA under IAS 17 and represents a very resilient performance given the tough backdrop we are operating in. The change in working capital resulted in a net outflow of GBP 248 million. This was due to an increase in inventory of GBP 55 million to support new stores and an outflow of GBP 193 million in net payables, reflecting the timing of payments and lease incentive receipts, which are essentially CapEx contributions from landlords.

Gross capital expenditure in the year was GBP 401 million, down GBP 114 million on the prior year, largely reflecting the completion of our supply chain investment phase, which saw associated CapEx 60% lower in FY '26. Tax, interest and other cash payments were GBP 198 million and includes about GBP 50 million of timing and phasing benefits. Taking all that into account, free cash flow was GBP 462 million, an improvement of GBP 123 million or 36% on last year and represents a 35% conversion of EBITDA.

After dividends and share buybacks of a combined GBP 253 million, we saw an increase in net cash of GBP 259 million year-on-year, leading to a closing net cash position on the balance sheet of GBP 311 million.

Turning to Slide 11, and we've done what we said we'd do. We managed our inventory and cash with focus and discipline, and we have maintained a strong balance sheet. Closing net inventory was flat year-on-year and 3% higher at constant FX rates, broadly in line with organic sales growth. This was a result of strong and disciplined management action in H2, and we've exited the year with a much cleaner book of inventory.

We also continue to take a disciplined approach to CapEx with a strong focus on returns. Gross CapEx for the year was GBP 401 million, and that's equivalent to 3.2% of sales, significantly lower compared with the 4.5% of sales in the prior year. Our average return on store investment remains in line with our 3-year payback hurdle.

Finally, we are maintaining a strong liquidity position with significant headroom, including IFRS 16 lease liabilities, our net debt was just over GBP 2.8 billion. This represents net leverage of 1.4x. And taking into account the Genesis buyout option in FY '30 and FY '31, our pro forma net leverage of 1.9x remains within investment-grade levels.

For completeness, last year, we completed a comprehensive debt refinancing and including undrawn RCFs, our total available liquidity at year-end was around GBP 1.8 billion.

So now I'll move on to our Q1 trading update and our outlook and guidance for the coming year. As a reminder, based on typical sales weightings, Q1 is our smallest quarter in the financial year. And as such, the timing of things such as key product launches can have a disproportionate impact. We maintained our commercial discipline in what continued to be a tough market backdrop. We delivered well around important customer and product moments, including EID, Easter, the U.S. tax refund season and key product launches, underscoring our ability to capture spend when it matters most.

Organic sales were flat year-on-year, supported by net new space growth of 2.3%, while like-for-like sales declined by 2.3%. Weather affected performance at the start of the quarter with wet conditions in Southern Europe and the U.K. and a severe cold snap in the U.S. Trading strengthened through March with a solid performance over ED, supported by our successful delivery of new product launches.

Trading in April was volatile, particularly in Europe and the U.K., with a solid performance over Easter, but lower footfall throughout the remainder of the month, partly offset by stronger in-store conversion and online sales. Our gross margin for Q1 is in line with our expectations and the qualitative guidance for FY '27, which I'll turn to in a moment.

So let me now turn to our market outlook.

Consistent with the commentary in our Q4 trading update, we expect market growth to be muted in FY '27, shaped by a weaker spending outlook for our core consumer demographic and ongoing product cycle evolution at some of our brand partners, particularly in footwear.

Since January, we've obviously seen rapid evolution in the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment. And while JD has no direct exposure to the Middle East, we continue to monitor the situation closely, including potential second-order impacts on pricing and consumer demand.

On this slide, we've set out the conditions under which we could see a weaker or indeed, on the more optimistic side, a stronger market growth outlook this year. We've also outlined where we believe annual market growth for FY '27 is currently tracking in each of our regions.

Consistent with the last 18 months, we expect the U.S. customer and market to continue to be more resilient than in the U.K. and Europe, where we currently expect consumer sentiment to remain subdued. This view is subject to change as the year unfolds, and we'll provide a further update at our H1 results in September.

So as much as that last slide was about the uncontrollables, this one is all about the controllables, and that's what we're focused on. As you saw earlier, we were able to fully offset like-for-like cost increases in FY '26. We are focused on driving structural efficiencies across the business.

So, by way of some examples, in procurement, we reduced our delivery carrier contract costs by GBP 11 million across the U.K. and Europe. And our tech contract renegotiations unlocked $6 million of savings per annum in North America alone. We also realized significant cash savings on lease renewals in the year, which appear in the P&L as lower depreciation under IFRS 16 accounting.

And talking of accounting, I'm pleased, perhaps not our auditors, to see a significant reduction in the audit fee, reflecting the progress we have made in the last couple of years in improving capability across our systems and functions in finance. Critically, there's also much more we can go after in FY '27.

Last month, we began to roll out our new finance and HR systems in North America. As we consolidate platforms, we unlock the potential for shared service capabilities, enabling further efficiencies. We will also continue to leverage our new scheduling tools to optimize store staff levels based on customer activity and better drive productivity in our stores.

As we make further progress in modernizing our distribution centers, including through automation, we expect to realize further scale benefits and overhead efficiencies, driving lower unit costs. And as a final example, we expect the continued rollout of self-checkout and RFID technology in stores to deliver meaningful customer and staff productivity benefits.

While these are only a few examples, as we've demonstrated in FY '26, we are aiming to significantly offset inflationary like-for-like OpEx increases in FY '27 through these and other efficiency and productivity initiatives.

So, bringing this all together and moving to our guidance for the year. Firstly, we continue to anticipate market growth to be muted in the near term. Within our sales performance, we expect net new space growth to contribute 2% to 3%. As in FY '26, we will continue to implement controlled price investments to stay aligned with near-term customer and market dynamics. We expect these to be weighted more towards the first half of the year.

And given the rapid evolution in the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment over the last couple of months, we believe it's prudent to guide to a wider profit range than we were previously planning internally. We'll continue to closely monitor the situation in the Middle East and its potential impact on the consumer and our business if the crisis is prolonged.

So overall, based on what we know today, we anticipate profit before tax and adjusting items to be within the range of GBP 750 million to GBP 850 million. And reflecting our strong cash-generative model, we expect free cash flow in the range of GBP 460 million to GBP 520 million for the year, supported by disciplined CapEx and strong working capital management.

Finally, Slide 17. And in conjunction with our new 3-year cash flow target announced today, we've also updated our capital allocation framework. With our major M&A and investment cycle complete, this update reflects the next phase of JD's journey and reinforces the balance between investment in growth alongside delivering strong cash flow and cash returns to shareholders.

First, we will prioritize organic growth opportunities with attractive returns and keep an open mind on inorganic bolt-on opportunities that accelerate our strategy. We expect gross CapEx to settle at around 3% to 3.5% of sales over the medium term.

Second, we will maintain appropriate leverage headroom to meet future obligations, including the Genesis buyout option in FY '30 and FY '31. And in line with our confidence in our medium-term trajectory, we're committed to delivering attractive cash returns to shareholders. Building on the proposed 20% increase in our FY '26 ordinary dividend, we will deliver progressive sustainable dividend growth with the clear intention of reaching a more attractive yield over time.

And this will be supplemented by the return of surplus capital via our rolling share buyback program of GBP 200 million a year. This clear and simple framework is underpinned by the strength of our balance sheet and our cash generation. So, with my review concluded, let me hand back over to Régis for the business update. Thank you.

[Music]

Great. Thank you. Thank you very much for putting less loud music. So, this time, it was a little bit better. So, thank you, Dominic. Let's move now to the business update.

So, for the year ahead, we are focusing on 5 key strategic initiatives.

First, our product range to offer the best and most relevant product to our customer.

Second, our store productivity to offer the best service to our customer at the right cost.

Third, our new e-commerce platform to offer the best online and omnichannel experience to our customer.

Fourth, our AI adoption to drive growth and improve our operational effectiveness.

Last but not least, our loyalty program to offer more personalization to our customer.

I will now take you through each of these initiatives in detail. But before doing so, let's talk about the market and our customer trends.

First trend, more young people are adopting an active lifestyle with health and fitness as a priority. I was amazed to see so many young people when I joined a running club and the atmosphere. It is much more like a nightclub than a running club. We see the same trends in our GYMS business, more people, more and more young people looking not only for weight lifting, but for community social interaction.

It's the same for HYROX, the same for Padel. People are prioritizing exercise, which is supporting our industry. Second, there is a clear trend for comfort in everyday wear with more consumer planning to wear comfortable clothes and shoes, supporting the long-term growth of our industry. At the same time, more than 80% of consumers wear sneaker every day. It means that the market is now maturing and is in a new phase, no more double-digit growth driven by first-time adoption, but continued growth driven by newness and repeat buy.

And we see customers embracing and merging different trends, wearing athletic apparel for casual occasion or pairing athletic footwear with nonathletic apparel. Like you have seen, our JD model, Dominic, wearing our product.

Same, I was at the graduation of my daughter and most of the boy were wearing suits with sneakers. We believe these are structural factors that will continue to create demand in a maturing market. The key for JD is being agile to identify trends and to partner with the brand to provide newness to the consumer to drive the market growth.

Talking about agility and trends. Let's turn to a very familiar slide, which demonstrates the power of our sports fashion model and our agility in navigating trends. Looking at footwear, the way we build our range is by category. We take running, performance and retro, basketball, football with the terrace, tennis with Classics, skates and other.

You can see the movement between the category. For example, running has grown significantly over the past two years and moved back above the 50% mark where it was in 2020, supported by the development of performance running. Thanks to our agility, to our flexible merchandising to our buying excellence, we are navigating, anticipating the product cycle, the change of trend and the evolution of brand heat. This is critical in the context of the evolving brand and product cycle.

Turning to apparel. You can see how we have moved our offer towards performance apparel and street fashion. It shows again our agility to capture and create growth by extending our reach with performance, where we have delivered more than 5x growth over the last five years.

Same for the street fashion that show our ability to extend to new category to respond to customer trends, including through the development of our own brand. Our apparel strategy is key as it creates a competitive advantage in every market we operate, and it brings to life our unique lifestyle proposition.

Coming to our key five priorities.

The first one is to diversify our proposition to deliver the latest and greatest product for our customer. The JD customer, the young customer, the 16, 24 years old customer, they are in sports, music, fashion, culture through the eyes and ears of our industry-leading buyers and merchandiser and thousands of young store colleagues across the globe, we know our customer incredibly well.

This, combined with our strong brand relationship, allow us to feed in and exchange insights to create the best possible assortment and bring it to life in the theater of our store. We also work with our brand partner to create our powerful exclusive product set, which we supplement with our own brand. Those own brands allow us to bring new products to market faster at attractive price points.

Our exclusive and own brand product make us 50% of our apparel sales and 30% of our footwear sales. We are leveraging those key strengths to diversify into more trends; more style and more category. Here are some examples. So, if you take fashion, you will see here brands like Timberland, Birkenstock, UGG, Havaianas. For all those brands, we are the #1 wholesaler account for them and trends like denim, knitwear and quarter zip.

If you take performance, this is where we have Nike Vomero, Adidas Evo, HOKA, ON, ASICS, and brands we help bring to market like Montirex was nothing created by two guys in Liverpool and now been in all our store and AYBL, the same for women. If you take Street, this is where we have Air Max 95, you may have seen the Li Tao campaign, Adidas Superstar, New Balance 9060, brands like Hoodrich, Von Dutch, which are exclusive to us and our own brands, Supply & Demand and Unlike Humans.

And if you take outdoor with North Face, Arc'teryx, we are the only mass market retailer having Arc'teryx, Salomon, Rab and Colombia. And the exclusive, all those products are exclusive to us. We are all, we develop exclusive products, delivering more style, more technical feature, more colorway. And we are open to business. So, if you like any of this product, I recommend you to go to one of our stores today. They are open, and the JD team is today modeling some of them today for you.

So, to summarize, we are bringing more brands, more style and more trends in performance, athletic, leisure and streetwear. There is no limit to what we can offer to our customer. We are widening our product range to ensure we are the #1 choice for them. To give a concrete example, our team identified nine months ago, the boots being a trend for your young customer. We have worked with Timberland to rejuvenate the yellow boots and create exclusive product.

Now we are working to bring back from Nike archive a boot. We have tested trends in size and foot patrol. We sold out very quickly, and we are now working for JD to produce a product for the second half of the year. This is the way we create and scale new products for the market. Another focus is to elevate women range across footwear and apparel to bring more appeals for the female customer where JD has a low market share. To do this, we are leveraging core insight.

We are increasing our apparel penetration in North America and Europe, where we see a significant opportunity from the current level. And we are working with our brand partner to enhance our product storytelling to better engage with our customer. We did recently through the campaign We Run This City, focus on performance running. And you know our customer is the epic runner, not the sweaty runner.

So today, we are accessing all product category of our major brand partner, performance, lifestyle, we access all. And it is for us to create this offer to deliver the best for our customer.

Second key strategic initiative is driving store productivity and optimization of our store estate. Our net store movement last year was a reduction of 39 stores, demonstrating our fewer, bigger and better store strategy.

First, optimizing. In North America, we will leverage group best practice to optimize EBIT store footprint and profitability. As part of this, we will close around 170 underperforming EBIT store over the next three years. In Europe, we are focusing on our key markets. We will, therefore, restructure our operation in Eastern Europe and in Germany.

And in the U.K., we are streamlining our outdoor business with less fascia and a better online business following the successful implementation of Shopify. All these actions will ensure our investments are concentrate where we can scale when we have scale, productivity and return are strongest.

Second, converting. This year, we are converting City Gear store to DTLR and Shoe Palace, following last year very successful trials and accelerating the conversion of our stand-alone Finish Line store to JD. Both conversion program have so far delivered a strong uplift in sales and great return on investment.

Third, fewer, bigger and better store to serve our customer better and to be more productive. In JD U.K., last year, we saw a net reduction of 24 stores, but a 4% increase in overall selling spreads. Let's bring it to life with this short video.

[Presentation]

I'm pleased to say that Trafford, which is a store that you have seen, is today the biggest multi-brand sports fashion store in the world by sales, not by size, but by sales. So, a big well done to the team. The first key strategic priority is completing our global e-commerce re-platforming. This has been my biggest frustration in the last three years. Our e-commerce platform built in-house was not fit for purpose, with major deficiency.

The priority has been to secure by investing in cybersecurity and putting in place the IT general control foundation that didn't exist in the business. Meanwhile, we have invested in cloud-based technology with a best-of-breed strategy and upgrade our legacy system. With now a solid foundation and the right team in place, led by Jetan, we make significant progress.

Last year, we rolled out our new online platform in North America, Southeast Asia and Italy, allowing us to expand ship from store and click and collect capability. We are very pleased with the results. We have seen a double-digit percentage increase in online sales. Building on this momentum, this year, we will continue to roll out our new online platform. We have done Ireland last week. We will do U.K. in the coming months and in Europe to complete our re-platforming projects.

Thanks to the composable architecture of the new technology, we are now able to build and release new technology products and feature much faster, enabling us to move forward with marketplace, which we don't have, loyalty, which we didn't been able, the consumer was not able to get redeem points on our loyalty scheme, AI and payment offering.

Fourth, we are accelerating AI adoption with a dual focus on driving growth and improving our operational effectiveness with a test and learn mentality and a decentralized and organic approach. We believe there is a huge opportunity to drive growth through better merchandising decisions, the right product at the right place, more personalization and helping our customers find the right product, for example, through Agentic LLMs, chatbot shopping, assistant or sizing prompts on our website.

At the same time, we are improving our operations through better inventory management, scale marketing content. We can duplicate our marketing content in an infinite way, improve customer care and central efficiency. While still in the infancy stage, we have seen some strong early results. Let me give you a couple of case studies to demonstrate our focus.

First, JD has completed a three-month trial of the AI chatbot shopping assistant, Ask JD, in the U.K. The chatbot tailors our customer shopping experience and helps them find the product they want faster. Customers are able to ask the assistant for suggestion on latest trends, details regarding specific products and creating head-to-toe looks. Early results have been promising with over 300,000, sorry, customer interaction and conversion increased by up to 5x. We will continue to test and learn and iterate with new feature. Ask JD will also be launched in the U.S. soon.

Under the operational effectiveness pillar, JD has implemented an AI-driven customer care chat and voice tool, enabling the faster 24/7 support for JD customer. All customer service call now start their journey with the voice AI with 40% handled entirely by the agent. This is allowing our customer service colleagues to focus on more complex issue while reducing the cost per service by around 30%.

As you know, from our announcement earlier this year, we are a first mover on Agentic commerce, which is highly relevant for the JD customer. As you watch a following demonstration, you will notice the customer experience is not fully end-to-end, and that's deliberate. What this demo highlights is the earlier part, what this demo should highlight is the earlier part of the customer journey, discoverability. Now it's highlighted.

Despite the prong being about a product, not a retailer, JD has consistently mentioned it, both in the narrative response and in the product recommendation generated by ChatGPT. Let me be clear on a few points.

First, not everything you've seen is unique to JD. The in-browser processing experience you see here is an OpenAI capability that can be enabled across many websites today. However, our ranking, our visibility and the frequency with which JD appears over competitor is very much a direct outcome of the advancement we have made in generating engine optimization over recent months.

Second, the more optimized brand experience you see, the demo particularly across the first group of brands are a direct result of the re-platforming work we have prioritized over the last year. We have now the foundation and the foundation will now pay off.

This is just the beginning. Our partnership with Commercetools will enable instant checkout, which we expect to go live soon in the U.S. Taken together, this is how we move from discovery to consideration to conversion, not just keeping pace with our customers shop, but shaping how they will shop in the future.

Our fifth and final strategic initiative is taking loyalty and data-driven personalization to the next level. In the year, we continue to scale our established global loyalty program, JD STATUS. The program now has almost 10 million active members globally, who generate between 33% to 40% of sales across our region. In the U.K., the Retail Royalty Index ranked JD STATUS within the top 10 of loyalty program in all retail sector.

One of the key distinctive feature of our proposition is JD Cash, which customers earn on each of the purchase. We see very strong return on this with over GBP 7 spend at JD for every GBP 1 of JD Cash. This year, we will focus on leveraging the data lake, it provides us with personalization through targeted offer, a personalized access to new product release, gamification and competition. This drive a virtuous circle. The more we personalize, the more engaged our customer, the more data we have, the more we can personalize and so on.

The output of our strategy initiative is to drive a better customer proposition, so better sales, a better productivity of our space and people and so better profitability. In North America, we will continue to focus on growing brand awareness of our JD Fashion through store opening and conversion, backed by a targeted marketing. We are continuing to increase our apparel penetration.

Meanwhile, we are leveraging the EBIT acquisition to reduce our support function costs. Altogether, we see a clear opportunity for North America margin to move higher in the medium term. In Europe, as you saw earlier, we have refined our market focus. We are taking appropriate action on the store footprint. As we scale automation, our L&DC will drive lower cost per unit and unlock savings on duties as we continue to move away from replenishment via the U.K. Building on the success we have seen elsewhere, we will roll out our new online platform across Europe this year. With this support from this action and natural operating leverage, there is a significant opportunity for the European margin to move higher over the medium term.

Finally, in the U.K., our focus is to be more productive with our space and to optimize our central overheads. We will also implement our new online platform later this year to regain online market share. And we are focused on deepening our customer relationship through loyalty and personalization. Over the medium term, we expect the U.K. operating margin to remain stable at the current level. This brings me to our group medium-term financial priorities.

Put simply, we intend to grow sales ahead of our market, driven by organic sales growth with a contribution from net new space of 2% to 3% points. Deliver operating margin progression driven by Europe and North America, as I outlined. This will be supported by our cost efficiency program as well as cost leverage. And finally, generate strong cash flow and deliver attractive shareholder return. Within this, our gross CapEx will stabilize around 3% to 3.5% of our total sales per annum with disciplined working capital management, which will support our new cumulative three years free cash flow target of over GBP 1.4 billion on three years.

To conclude, our customer-first approach, combined with tight cost and capital control deliver a resilient performance for JD against what was a tough trading environment. Our economic model is generating significant free cash flow, and we expect to deliver attractive shareholder return through increased dividend and share buyback.

To finish, our FY '27 guidance is centered on controlling the controllable. We are focusing on maintaining our cost and cash discipline while building a global customer-focused business with the right infrastructure and governance. Before I hand over for our Q&A session, I'd like to thank all my colleagues for their hard work and dedication. Their commitment and their agility are moving us forward, forever forward.

Thank you. Over to you.

Thank you very much. All right. We'll now move to questions. No loud music, please, to protect my delicate ears. So we're going to go to questions now. We're going to alternate between left and right. State your name and institution. Don, can we go with Richard on the front row, please?

I've got 2 questions to kick us off, if that's all right, one on apparel, one on Finish Line. Apparel, I think last year, the organic sales were up about 5%, but the weighting moved down slightly. And I just wondered if you can talk about how you see that weighting moving going forward by geography. I think at the moment, it's around half. Is that right in the U.K., but I guess probably underpenetrated outside the U.K. That's the first one.

And then Finish Line, I wondered if you can just give a bit more color on how you see that store portfolio evolving over the next sort of 3 years or so. I think you're talking about 80 to 90 conversions in the coming year. But what are the sort of plans for the rest of the estate?

Yes. So apparel, you're right, did well, plus 5%. The weighting is diluted by the acquisition of Courir where there is no apparel. So that's the reason. So, if you take the like-for-like weighting, it's going up. So, it's just a matter of the acquisition of Courir where apparel is a very limited part of that. But we are really happy with the performance in apparel and continue to do well. I think footwear is where it is more challenging.

And just on the geography point, in the U.K., actually more than 50% is apparel. And I think that shows the diversity of our business. In Europe, it varies depending on the country, but broadly around 30%, some higher, some lower, such as Courir, for example. And North America is less than 20%. So I think that's where there's a real opportunity. And as Régis said, Courir clearly has a lower, is more footwear focused. Hibbett is also more footwear focused. So I think that's also taken it back a little bit in the U.S. But with those now in the base, the opportunity to grow the penetration across the board is absolutely there. So on the like-for-like, we continue to increase penetration.

So on Finish Line, as you know, Finish Line, we finished the year with 170 stores. What we are doing is that we continue to convert. So in three years' time, there should be no Finish Line stores. We will keep the Macy's business, which is under the Finish Line banner, but we will have no more Finish Line stores. It's just the time to do the right things in terms of conversion. We don't want to convert with, most of the conversion now is with an extension or a better location in the mall. So, it depends on that.

And the other part is that in the U.S., you have some malls that are really dying, but we do a good business. So that's why the like-for-like is down because those malls are, but for the moment, all those stores are profitable. So we will close them when they start to be a problem, but that's why we are taking our time. But that's why I think we should focus the like-for-like excluding the Finish Line stores, which are, by definition, going down. As a matter of time, there will be no more Finish Line stores. So in two years' time, we should have no more Finish Line standalone stores.

Anne Critchlow here. I've got three questions, please. First, if you could give us an idea of the number of net closures overall for the year? And then second, I'm just wondering if there's some tension between your aim to invest in the stores, but also the free cash flow target. So, are parts of the business pushing you to spend more perhaps? And then thirdly, on marketplace, are you working with a partner there?

Okay. Dominic, you do the first one. I will do the 2 others.

Yes. In terms of, you talk about last year or the year to come?

Year to come.

So in terms of, last year, as you saw, we closed 39 stores overall. It's probably easier just to give a view by geography. In terms of our move in the U.K., we expect to see probably around 20 stores closed in the U.K. in the coming year. But as we said last year, space-wise, we'll probably stay at least the same or increase as we move that.

We will see the beginning of the closure of the stores in North America with Hibbett, 175 stores probably over around 3 years. So if you assume an average spread over a period of time. If we then go to expansions in North America, around 20 new JD stores and probably 70 to 80 Finish Line to JD conversions. So that will give you a flavor of the mix in North America. And then in Europe, probably around even by the time we think about what we're doing around JD plus closures in Germany and Eastern Europe, probably a net negative overall. I won't give you a precise number because sometimes you work through the plans, the timing may be a bit different, but stay broadly flat for the year.

So, concerning your question on free cash flow, no, there is no tension. I think we have increased a lot of investment. And that's the reason why profit is down, net EBITDA is up, because of the investment we have made, especially with IFRS. You get the first part of your investment very penalizing a lot your profit. And I think what I always learned from my finance background is that cash is king. And when you see the level of cash, it means that the business is doing well. And I think these investments we have done are the right investments.

The business was underinvested mostly in terms of infrastructure, but even in stores in the U.K., where we have an older store fleet, we didn't invest. So we are able to deliver this free cash flow without putting any constraint on the openings because today, we want to keep our discipline, which has always been the same and which is a 3-year payback. And today, in a market which is muted, there are not a lot of opportunities to open a lot of stores. So we adapt to that.

So, there is really no constraint in terms of investing in the business. And I would like everyone to really understand these key numbers. If you compare to 2022, our profit is down GBP 100 million. Our EBITDA, old-fashioned, is up GBP 200 million. It shows really the quality of the work and the investments we have made in this business. And I think we should be judged on this one because that shows the underlying strength of the business.

On your question around marketplace, our technology didn't offer us the ability to do that. We are late. The new technology we have implemented, commercetools, will help us to be able to do marketplace. For the moment, we have a partnership with Mirakl around that, but that can be flexible. But definitely, this is my biggest frustration for the last 3 years. Every time I was asking for something, the platform cannot do that. So that's why we had spent a lot of time. We have lost ground.

And I think that in the U.K., we have lost market share online because our platform was not good. In the past, we moved our digital business easily because we were the only ones to access product. Now the access to product, it's less scarce in terms of ability to access product, and the quality of the website makes a big difference. And our website is not good. We need to say it. It will change. In July, we are implementing the new platform, and we will start to reinvest in our proposition online around marketplace, but even our loyalty program.

You cannot redeem your points, your JD Cash, on e-commerce. There's plenty of limitations we have today on omnichannel that will be slowly but surely removed, and we can now really do a much better job and catch up on online business.

Let's move over to the side. Can we go to Kate, please, on the third row.

First question is just on the group gross margin. You made a comment about higher marketing contributions as a percentage of sales, adding, I think, about 0.3 percentage points of sales. Is this due to a more supportive Nike, and how sustainable are those higher marketing contributions? My second question is just on the guidance for FY '27.

You're guiding effectively for another year of profit decline. Can you give some more detail on your expectations by regions in terms of what's up, what's down? And then my final question is just on Finish Line X Macy's. Is that unprofitable? And if so, how much of a drag is from the U.S. or North America, should I say?

I will take the first one and second and Dominic will complement the first one and the second one. I'll start with the last one. The Macy's business is a very profitable business for us. So, it's a very good business. So that's why we will continue. And it's a different customer target, more female, a little bit older customer, and we are targeting a different offer, but that's a great business that we have there.

But it's, so it is my answer is on Finish Line Macy's. So, this business is a very profitable business and a very good business, and it's under the name of Finish Line. You have a Finish Line stand-alone store, which is a different business, which was my first answer. So that's the difference between the two. Gross margin, it reflects more support from all brands. So, it's not Nike related. It's all brands. I think that in a world where you need to create demand, you need to connect with the consumer, brands are investing more and they are investing with us because they see and this is really interesting.

You have seen the success of the Molly-Mae partnership with Adidas. Is the brand understand now more and more that the go-to-market strategy should be more exclusive, more with a key partner, and we are getting more of that where we launch product together, we get marketing support to do that together. So it's not a relation to Nike. It's a relation with all the brands. Dominic?

And just on that point, it's neutral to the bottom line because effectively, it's compensating us for costs that we spend. So, what you're seeing here is just the disaggregation and grossing up between OpEx and gross margin. In the past, we'll have had this. It's just that it's the way it's worked through in the year, and it will vary a little bit from year-to-year. So, I think the thing to focus on gross margin is a 30 basis points price investment that we've made as being the real underlying trend of what's happening with gross margin.

In terms of the profit guidance for the year, the overall group profit margin will go down, obviously, as you say, because we're expecting to see profit go down during the year. When you look at where the market is, as we explained on the slide, we expect North America to be more resilient. And therefore, I would expect less pressure in North America, particularly if we start to see some of the benefits of the synergies coming through. We've made good progress on those, and there's more to go to. I think we'll see more pressure in the short term in the U.K. just because of the market pressures that we're seeing there.

And in Europe, we'll have pressure because the market is challenging, as we said in the slide, but the actions we're taking around Heerlen, around the store portfolio, around e-commerce platforms going in and leverage should start to help offset that a little bit. So that will give you a little bit of the dynamics of what we're seeing in the various key markets.

We'll move to the next question. Nothing on this side. Clive, please on the third row.

Clive Black from Shore Capital, who feels very old wearing a tie, I have to say. And my mental health has been stressed as a Coventry City support seeing Aston Villa in your video. Two questions. First of all, Reg, you've talked about youth unemployment in the past, I've been worried about it. How do you see trends across your geographies in that 16 to 24 age group? And then on your guidance, what are you assuming to deliver 750 this year? What are the factors that would take you to the lower end of that range across the group, please?

I will take the first one, and Dominic will take the second one. What we've seen is that you know the numbers better than I do. But I think long term, the good news is that the demography will help because long term, we should see unemployment going down because of the evolution of the population. But short term, especially in U.K., the increase of the NI has been really a key factor in retail investing in technology to replace people. All the 10, 20 hours checkout. Now you go to M&S, you cannot find someone at the tier. It's even the large deal are now self-checkout. So that has been and you have seen that in the last 12, 18 months, a big development of self-checkout, which is our customer was doing 20, 20 hours in that job.

So, we see the unemployment for you going up a lot in U.K., which explains, it's very interesting. We get the data from Circana, which is market data. And if you take the sneaker market, the sneaker market is flat. And the part which is reducing is the 14, 18 years old, which is exactly those customers that will have a 10 hours contract. With this contract, they were able to buy a pair of sneaker that the parents didn't want to pay because it was seen as something and they don't have anymore. And that's why it's putting, I think, pressure, especially in U.K. In Europe, a little bit less because as you know, Europe is much more protective on all those things, but we see a little bit the same and less so in the U.S. So that's where we see.

So that's really, for me, as you mentioned, is a key KPI I'm looking at because that's the one that makes a difference for us is unemployment because the first one that lost their job or don't get the 10, 20 hours contract is a youth customer. And we see that's why the way we have guided, which is to come to your point and to do the introduction to Dominic is that, we see U.K. as the worst because of the employment of the youth. Europe being a little bit the same. And the other thing that happened in Europe and U.K. is that the consumer is half empty, whereas the U.S. customer is the most resilient. They always are full and the unemployment is in a better shape. So that's really what we're seeing.

And on the guidance point, in setting the guidance, we really evolved from what we said at the trading statement in January. We didn't give formal guidance then, but we talked about muted market growth. And over the medium term, we see this as a 2% to 3% market growth sector. Muted is probably more like 0% to 1% growth. We'd expect to slightly outperform that 2% to 3% space growth would then point to negative like-for-like, and that's where the market is at the moment, and I think no surprise in the current environment.

There are other puts and takes in terms of new space and significantly offsetting OpEx inflation, and we do expect to see some pressure on margin continuing at the same level. Going to the bottom end of the GBP 750 million, what would need to be the case? I think probably most likely at the sales line. So, an assumption around where that like-for-like would sit in the period.

But at the bottom end, we're probably in an environment where there's probably a bit more promotion on in the market because people are struggling a bit more and possibly some more inflation. So difficult to be precise, but I think it's just us being pragmatic as we were in November coming to the peak season to say this is an uncertain period. So, let's just give ourselves some more headroom. And I think probably a derisk on like-for-like is the most likely way to get there.

Over to JP and Warwick, please.

Jonathan Pritchard at Peel Hunt. Just on apparel, I think the received wisdom over the years has been that apparel runs a higher margin gross margin than footwear. Is that still the case? And is it hundreds of basis points? Is it tens of basis points? Or are they pretty much the same now? Just to build on Anne's question, the other side of it really, the U.K. real estate market, is there the availability of sites? I mean, obviously, not as big as Trafford commonly, but is there a strong pipeline of space to get to that bigger and better mantra? And then just interested in that, Dominic, what you're saying on the sales bridge about the like-for-like definition. Could you just give us a bit more color on that?

Intake margin on apparel is higher than footwear. Exit margin is the same. So there has never been a big difference. So it varied by season and all that stuff because it depends on, to make it simple, it's the same. So I think that it has been the same for the last 3 years. So there is no big difference between the two. In terms of U.K., we have Trafford, we have Blue Water. There is still some stores that we want to expand and to create this theater. So that is around, I would say, 5 projects per year in the coming 3 years, that type of magnitude. And on the like-for-like? Yes.

I pulled that out simply because people benchmark us against others, particularly in our sector. Our like-for-like definition follows the majority of what retailers do, which is that our like-for-like is our core European retail well, most retailers. our like-for-like is our core estate and where we have new stores, where we stand by more than 10%, where we relocate in the market, we treat all of that as new space. And as you saw in the results, 2.1% organic, 4.2% new space, giving you minus 2%, 2.1% like-for-like.

Some of our competitors, our very largest competitor in North America, treat effectively relocation and expansion as like-for-like investment in their existing store estate. If we apply those numbers to our measures, we'd be minus 0.6% like-for-like for last year. So, it's just giving you a comparison that when you look at different businesses, they use different measures and therefore, direct comparison isn't always giving you the answer that you might expect.

And to give you, and that's why we insist on U.K. especially because to give you a concrete example, if you take Trafford, Trafford is driving, is not in our like-for-like. But the impact that we have around the store because we drive so many sales is in our like-for-like. So, in a certain we're opening bigger store is driving a negative like-for-like, whereas if you take one of our competitor, main competitor, it will put everything in the like-for-like. So that's where it's a very different way of measuring.

The same in U.S., some of the conversion is not in the like-for-like. So when we do expansion, which in the case, it will be. But the more practical example is Trafford. Trafford has a very negative impact on our like-for-like, whereas it's a big success.

Just before we go to Warwick, if anyone's got any questions on technology and AI, Jeff I am, Jetan is ready for you. He is hungry.

Warwick Okines from BNP Paribas. Sorry, actually not on tech. I've got two. You said that the apparel mix is a bit less than 20% in North America. Could you specifically say what it is for the JD banner and where it, how much it increased last year, please? And secondly, the most buoyant footwear category, it seems is performance running for you. Is there enough innovation in the pipeline for that to keep that the strongest segment in footwear?

On the first point, it's just above 20% actually for JD, and it's grown by probably about 2 percentage points in the last year. So we're seeing steady growth there, but this takes time to build. So it's not going to be a sudden change.

And don't forget U.S., you have a lot of in the South, it will never be the U.K. one because in U.K., you sell jacket, which is a much higher price point that you don't sell in half of the U.S., you sell only shorts and T-shirts. So there is a price.

And a good example of that is JD Canada is about 30% apparel penetration because of the price point of the jacket area.

On running, I think the biggest growth is not performance. In fact, it's retro running. So it's not performance running play a role, but it's not significant compared to the growth that we are experimenting in retro running. So it's not linked to the performance running so much.

Charles, please.

Charles Allen from Bloomberg Intelligence. I think sort of just looking at the numbers you've given with space growth and negative like-for-likes, one has to assume that your sales densities are down a little bit, and you did talk about deleveraging. I mean, is that right? And do you need to start getting your sales densities up to start getting the margin effect that you're talking about?

Sales density going down a little bit, but because we are closing some small stores, which are with a high sales density, but not very profitable because of the productivity. So, you have the two elements. It's the sales density and the productivity.

The problem of our small store is that you need someone to open, you need someone to close. So, when sales is going down a little bit, you have no leverage, whereas with a larger store, you have leverage because you can invest in technology and all that staff.

So yes, you're right in terms of sales density, but in terms of staff density, it's going up.

Productivity in store, Sales per employee is going up.

That's the balance. And you get larger stores. And when you get larger store, your cost per square meter is lower than you have small stores. So, you get that.

Just double check, are there any questions on the telephone lines at this point? No. Okay. I think we've got a few more on this slide.

Jean Roach from Schroders. Can I have three, sorry. So, one is on trends in shrinkage across the three main regions. Then the vintage effect, I was being told that this was having no effect about a year ago. I do feel that must have ramped up now and if you're able to measure it. And then, yes, I will ask one on technology and AI.

How close are you to having shoppers directly being linked into your websites by the likes of Claude or GPT? Or is that still not happening?

Take the last one, I take the other two.

Shrinkage I mean JD shrinkage as a group is incredibly good, less than 0.1% and that does reflect an average. It's better in some markets than others, but in all markets, less than 1%. And we've seen it steady in U.K., Europe and actually improving in North America, which is, I think, a testament to the methods that we use to protect our stores.

So, in terms of shoppers being linked into the app itself or into our commerce, what you saw today in the demo was essentially a web view. It takes you to our product page in that respect. And then that commerce journey actually maps back into our commerce channel. In terms of customers linking into the app, our Hibbett trade has actually gone live with a Hibbett store within the ChatGPT app. That's a test that we're running at the moment as a first stature within the group. We've been live for a month, early days, and we'll see how that plays out in the coming weeks.

And Vinted, I think that is definitely happening on apparel. On footwear, the penetration is very, very low because unfortunately or fortunately, the young customer when they were sneaker for a significant period of time, the smell stay.

And I'm sure if you have a teenager, you will understand what I'm saying by that. So, it's really very minimum what they do on the sneaker side. On apparel, it's more important. But most of that is to buy new products. So, they just renew the product cycle. So, we are not, our apparel sales are up. So definitely, we don't see an impact. And I think on sneaker, we are protected by the smell.

Thierry Cota from Bank of America. Three questions, please. You haven't mentioned the World Cup. I was wondering whether you could measure the impact be on a net basis, excluding cannibalization, if that's possible and by region, Europe versus the U.S.

Secondly, on Finish Line, it seems that when you give the numbers of like-for-like with the effect of Finish Line conversion without it, the gap has been shrinking. So I was wondering if you could elaborate on the number of stores and how much exactly is left to do? And if it's basically a function of fewer stores being converted or less efficiency in doing so?

And a very small question, U.S. tariffs, you're paying some tariffs for the products which are under your banner into the U.S. So how much you paid last year? And with the tariffs being halved, is that going to be a few million saved starting in the latter part of the year?

Okay. So, World Cup, I think what we measure in World Cup is Replica, which is tiny on the total sales. So there is no, that's a direct impact. There is a positive impact about talking about sport, about the soccer or the football culture in the U.S., which is a more midterm, long term.

But I know you like numbers, but you cannot capture a number linked, the only numbers we can capture is Replica and Replica is what, GBP 30 million business or it's not at the size of the group, it's very marginal.

You have a positive impact about, we were born in Manchester and Liverpool North of U.K. based on the football culture. That's what we have exported across Europe. and that's what we have exported in the U.S. The U.S., it's more a basketball culture. Football culture is less. So, the fact that football culture become more important in the U.S. will have a positive impact because that's a culture that we know very well that we are able to leverage. But that's a midterm. So, there is no direct impact. We don't sell football boots or very marginally in the U.K. So there is no direct impact.

Don't forget, we are a sports fashion retailer. We are not a sports retailer. So, there's no direct impact. Yes, that's GBP 30 million. It's GBP 30 million. So yes, but we do 13 billion. So, if you want to go in micro detail, we can go, but I don't think it's significant.

So Finish line? Finish line, I mean the reason it's representing a smaller proportion of the difference is because it's becoming a smaller state. So, at the beginning of FY '26, we had about 260 Finish Line stores. Last year, we closed 14, transferred 69 to JD. So, we finished this year with 175. We'll probably transfer around 80 to 90 this year.

So we expect to finish around sort of 80, 90 stores at the end of this financial year. And as Régis said earlier on, really, we won't talk about them because they are less than 4% of our 2,500 stores in North America, and we will be opportunistic about when we close them because some of them are still making contribution or close them when it makes economic sense to do so. So the reason is just it's getting a smaller proportion of the total store base in North America.

And on the U.S. tariff, as we said last year, we have no direct impact of the U.S. tariff or very limited. We mentioned last year 8 million. So that's the type of magnitude. And it was mainly around our CapEx because it's a fixture and fitting that we are buying. As you know, we are buying our product from the brand, and the brand is covering the tariff or getting the benefit. So it's more a question for Adidas and Nike and not for us.

Caroline Gulliver from Equity Development. Just to build on Jean's question, could you just talk a little bit more about the latest trends you're seeing by region in sort of the customer journey online for your young customers? Obviously, the 16- to 24-year-olds with regard to social media marketing and then how you're linking kind of TikTok and the app and the ChatGPT and all the rest of it for all these in the room.

Do you want to take that? Okay. Great.

You are the youngest.

I'll cite some of the demonstrations you've seen today hopefully answer that question. So Ask JD is a great example. Really, it's driven an AI experience where the customer can really probe and act and enhance that customer journey through the life cycle of the digital ecosystem. We started off in a very measured test and learn approach. We actually injected that product feature in the product listing page first.

And what we saw was low uptake and driving only 1% conversion on that page onto the next kind of size of the customer journey. When we move that then to the product display page, we saw with the 300,000 sort of customers that Régis mentioned on the sample size, we saw high uptake of 5x conversion into the basket. So, what we're seeing is in the micro moments of the customer journey, we are infusing AI where it makes sense. And we really taking a customer-led approach, very much a measurement-led approach to make sure it makes sense.

This isn't really about injecting AI everywhere. It's about making sure it adds value to the experience and also it converts and it makes economic sense. On TikTok, I think you mentioned early stages of kind of looking at that channel. Obviously, that channel has a different economic model. It has a different need state, but it's also where our customer lives, and we engage highly with the customer on that social media channel. At the moment, we're exploring with partners the opportunity to transact, what that means in terms of the proposition we serve there and the price point and the experience. I think that's the 2 questions. Is there one more? Or does that kind of answer the question?

One more Kate, I think. Dom, if you could pass the mic to her.

I'll come back with another tech question as well because I had a bit of a shopping experience two weeks ago. So, you're due to complete your global e-com update in the U.K. and Europe this year, how quickly will the shopping experience actually change for the consumer? Because obviously, the systems aren't very joined up at the moment. So will you sort of be able to get next day click and collect, for example, are we going to have your loyalty program on the same app as your JD app, et cetera. So, what would the experience for the consumer be overnight sort of thing?

Yes. I think there's multiple strands in that question, so I'll kind of answer piece by piece. I think the first thing is when we talk about the website, yes, it is a new website, but there is a whole raft of change that we're doing underneath that. So, it's a composable architecture. So what do we mean by that?

Just first, the website in U.K. will be changed in July, July, August.

It will change in July in that respect. But it's powered with a new search and merchandising platform. It's powered with a new content platform. It's powered with a new order management system in that respect. In terms of the customer experience, what it does unlock is more of an omnichannel offering.

So, it allows the ability to drive the customer promise of Click & Collect further up the funnel in that respect. So, you can start seeing availability of stock in the product listing pages. You have the options to do quick same-day pickup or Click & Collect, as you mentioned, it will have loyalty injected in it, so you can start to burn and earn online. And there's new sort of product features that we want to deploy as part of that launch.

So, it's more fewer clicks to basket. It's better site speed. It's more scalable in that respect. So, you'll see more features being launched. This is not about replacing one platform from another and driving parity. It's elevating that experience.

And you're right, it's not great today.

On the app, it's similar as well. So, I think you mentioned the app will also be elevated with the new app. It coincides with every market launch that we do. So, we launched Italy and Ireland. We upgrade the app capability with new features. We will see the same play out in the app experience in U.K. in the summer. Okay.

I think that's with our Q&A concluded. I think we can thank you all very much for joining us today. Thanks very much for the JD management team. See you soon.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the JD Sports Half Year Results. I'm delighted to say that it's a set of results where we're on track for the year as we stand here today.

And I just really wanted to make a couple of introductory remarks before I hand over to the team. It's been a tough couple of years really in lots of ways. There's been a lot of challenges we're facing too. The markets have not been great. Consumer markets have been uncertain. I think we all know about the political and economic background in our major markets. And of course, the cost base here in the U.K., in particular, with the national insurance rises and various other things have been very challenging.

We've also internally, of course, had governance challenges that we've had to sort of face into as well, which have required investment and turnaround. And I really just wanted to start by commending the team really. The strategy is very much on track at the moment. I think they've shown great resilience in the face of a lot of those challenges. And of course, we're making great progress. The governance, in particular, I think commend Dominic and his team for the work they've done around the financial controls in the business and all led by Régis, of course.

And of course, the integration of things like the supply chain, the progress we've made on governance, the good work that we've done around the integration of the acquisitions we've made and, of course, the great work we've done on our brands. And if you need an example of that, go and see the Trafford Centre and see how that's moved JD on here and it's probably its most mature market. I think all of that is very commendable.

So you're seeing here today some of the results of that hard work and with more to come. But I just wanted to say thank you to all of the team in JD for the hard work that's gone on. It's never easy when markets are difficult, but I think they're doing great stuff. So thank you very much, and I'll hand over now to Régis.

Thank you, Andy. Thank you for your kind words. So good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us. I'm Régis Schultz, CEO of JD Group, and we are here joined by Dominic Platt, our CFO; and Mike Armstrong, our JD Global Managing Director.

I will start with our key message and highlights from the first half. I will then hand over to Dominic to go through the financials. And finally, I will take you through the key business update. As a reminder, at our April strategy update, we set out some clear priority for the short and medium term. First, to deliver the vision to be the leading sport fashion powerhouse. Second, to build the infrastructure and the governance you will expect from a company of our size and a world leader. And third, to focus on cash generation and shareholder return.

So I'm pleased to say that our first half results reflect our priority and demonstrate our operating and financial discipline against what was a tough trading environment. We are building a track record of focus and consistent execution against our strategic objective. As a result, we are gaining market share in North America, in Europe and building on the very significant opportunity we see in both regions to develop JD brand and leverage our complementary concept businesses.

To finish our key message, we said we will provide you an update on the U.S. tariff impact. Dominic will go into more details on this, but you will be pleased to know that we see limited impact in the current reporting year. Let me now hand over to Dominic to run through the first half financial results with you. Thank you.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you, Régis and Andy. So let's start with our summary financials for the group here on Slide 6. At constant FX rates, total sales were 20% higher year-on-year, reflecting a full half of sales from Hibbett and Courir, who were acquired in July and November, respectively, last year. Stripping these businesses out, organic sales growth was 2.7%, comprising 2.5% lower like-for-like sales and 5.2% growth from net new space.

Against a tough backdrop in all our markets, we maintained our trading disciplines. Gross margin was 48%, 60 basis points behind the prior year. Excluding Hibbett and Courir, which are slightly lower-margin businesses, gross margin was 40 basis points lower year-on-year. This was driven by controlled price investments, particularly in our online offer to increase customer engagement and conversion.

Turning to operating profit. As a reminder, earlier this year, we updated our definition of operating profit to include IFRS 16 lease interest, as we believe including all property-related costs gives a truer picture of the operating margin of each part of the business. On this basis, operating profit of GBP 369 million was 6.3% lower at constant FX rates. Excluding Hibbett and Courir, operating costs were 4.7% higher at constant FX rates, and this was driven entirely by new stores. Through structural cost reductions and flexing the staffing levels and discretionary spend, we managed to fully offset the impact of higher labor rates and technology costs as well as noncash mark-to-market charge of GBP 14 million in H1. More on that later.

Overall, the group's operating margin was 6.2%, 170 basis points lower versus the prior year at constant FX rates. Profit before tax and adjusting items was GBP 351 million, 11.8% lower at constant FX rates and in line with our profit phasing guidance. Included in this is a GBP 22 million increase in net finance expense, excluding lease interest, which was driven by lower cash balances and debt financing related to acquisitions. Our adjusted earnings per share were 8.5% lower year-on-year at constant FX rates.

For completeness, the statutory PBT was GBP 138 million, 9.5% higher year-on-year. This reflects lower adjusting items or exceptional items as we all used to know them. These are essentially limited to noncash revaluation of our Genesis put option together with the amortization of acquired intangibles. The Board has declared an interim dividend of 0.33p per share, consistent with the prior year. In line with our dividend policy, this represents 1/3 of the final dividend for FY '25. And last but certainly not least, we delivered a 5% increase in operating cash flow to GBP 546 million, demonstrating yet again the highly cash-generative nature of our business.

Turning now to our revenue bridge from last half year to this. The left-hand side rebases H1 '25 for FX headwinds of 2 percentage points as well as some small disposals from last year. As I mentioned earlier, like-for-like sales were 2.5% lower and new stores contributed 5.2 percentage points to sales. This includes annualizations from stores opened last year and also the fact that we opened 4 flagship stores in the period, including the Trafford Centre in Manchester, which is strongly outperforming against its plan. So overall, organic sales growth was 2.7% at constant FX rates. We believe this is faster than the growth of our addressable markets, driven by market share gains in North America and Europe. Finally, Hibbett and Courir added GBP 869 million of sales for overall sales growth of 20%.

As you can see from this slide, the JD Group is a very well-balanced and diversified global business. 71% of our sales come from North America and Europe, our key growth markets. Following the Hibbett acquisition, North America is our largest market, representing 39% of group sales. Our channel and category mix varies by region, which provides us with opportunities for growth. For example, our largest region for online sales penetration is the U.K. at around 25%, with other regions overall in the mid-teens.

We're building a fully flexible omnichannel proposition in all our regions, offering customers a seamless service for purchasing, delivery and return, whether they choose to use our stores or online channels or as we are increasingly seeing a combination of the 2.

Within our omnichannel proposition, organic store sales grew by 3.6%, reflecting the continued resilience of our full-price business model and our store opening program. Online sales were 1.6% lower with good growth in North America and Europe, offset by a weaker online performance in the U.K. While U.K. store sales were positive year-on-year, the U.K. online market as a whole was slightly more promotional during the period, especially in the second quarter, driven by short-term discounting to clear inventory. To maintain our competitiveness, we made some controlled investments in our prices and have seen an improvement in customer engagement online in recent weeks.

Turning to category. Our agile and multi-brand model really comes into play across our combined footwear and apparel proposition. When we exclude Hibbett and Courir, which are more footwear-centric fascias, apparel participation increased to 31%, with footwear decreasing to 58% of sales. In footwear, we continue to see a fundamental shift in the global footwear product cycle, given the transition between newer franchises and some significant end-of-cycle product lines. Notwithstanding this, we saw strong growth across brands more in the middle of the cycle, which reflects the strength of our multi-brand model. The early signals of new product franchises in terms of both launches and pipeline are encouraging, albeit they are a small part of sales today. Overall, organic footwear sales were 1% lower year-on-year.

The apparel product cycle is very different compared to footwear. Our apparel proposition is in excellent shape, supported by innovation and our own brands, and we believe there is significant scope to leverage this for growth, particularly in North America, where our apparel mix is low compared to other regions. Despite tough comparatives from replica shirt sales in the U.K. and Europe, due to the Euro 24 football tournament last year, organic apparel sales were 6% higher year-on-year. Our other category, which includes outdoor living equipment and gym memberships, maintained its share at 4% of sales mix.

Turning now to our geographic regions. As a reminder, we have 2 different lenses on how we look at the JD Group. First, as you know, segmentation by fascia JD, our Complementary Concepts, our Sporting Goods and Outdoor fascias. This is our primary lens because it aligns to our strategy. And most importantly, it's how our customers and brand partners engage with the JD Group. The geographic split that you see on this slide helps to focus internally on creating the most efficient operating model to support our range of fascias in each region and, in the process, maximizing the returns we make on our investments.

So starting with sales by region. As reported in our trading update in August, like-for-like sales in H1 were resilient in Europe, supported by our JD and Sporting Goods fascias. We are encouraged by improved like-for-like trends quarter-on-quarter in both North America and Asia Pacific. In the U.K., we see organic sales as a better KPI than LFL, given the ongoing evolution of our store footprint with bigger and better stores. Régis will cover this in his slides later. U.K. organic sales were 1.7% lower in H1, affected by tough prior year comparatives due to the Euro 24 football tournament.

Turning to margins. The group operating margin of 6.2% reflects the H2 weighted nature of our annual sales. By region, the North American margin was 340 basis points lower year-on-year. This was influenced by 2 significant but short-term factors. First, the ongoing wind down of the Finish Line fascia. During the first half, Finish Line invested in price within its online offering to maintain competitiveness. It also closed 15 stores and transferred a further 22 to JD in the period.

Those conversions continue to see significant uplifts in performance and profitability as the JD concept continues to resonate with North American customers. The remaining 220 Finish Line stores will be wound down over time, but will weigh on the North American margin in the short term. And second, the impact of Hibbett year-on-year. Last year, having completed the Hibbett acquisition on the 25th of July, the business recorded a spectacular first week due to back-to-school demand, making a significant proportion of its annual profit under our ownership in that 7-day window.

Aside from these factors, as I mentioned earlier, Hibbett is a slightly lower margin business than the other North American fascias. The integration of the business is progressing well, and it's a key component in our multiyear program to create an integrated platform for the nationwide growth of all our fascias in North America with an efficient supply chain and back office. We're on track to deliver annualized cost synergies of $25 million with half to 2/3 of this, so about GBP 10 million to GBP 12 million expected in H2.

In Europe, we saw a decline in the operating margin of 40 basis points. The main factor to call out here were our controlled price investments, particularly in the online offer, which saw good results in terms of customer traffic and conversion. As our supply chain investments in Europe come to an end in FY '27, we will see the operating margin in this region start to step forward towards the higher single-digit levels we have elsewhere. To remind you of our broader medium-term guidance for the group, we expect to see over GBP 20 million of cost benefits related to technology and supply chain double running costs across FY '27 and FY '28.

And finally, the U.K. margin was lower by 130 basis points. This reflects the tough trading conditions, as highlighted, as well as higher technology, labor and costs related to new stores. We have and continue to make strong progress on our plans to enhance sales productivity and cost efficiency in the U.K., and Régis will touch on that more later.

So on to the group profit bridge. Starting from the left-hand side, lower like-for-like sales at a constant gross margin contributed GBP 33 million to the decline, and that's net of GBP 27 million of attributable variable OpEx savings. We then have a further GBP 25 million from the like-for-like gross margin rate reduction. The next bar shows a GBP 10 million net OpEx increase, which includes the higher salary and national insurance rates as well as technology investments that we flagged back in May. It's a net number because we've also included structural OpEx reductions in the year.

Alongside the higher mark-to-market charge of GBP 13 million, we offset these increases in full with our variable cost reductions, as you can see with the arrows on this slide. For the year as a whole, as we stated in our FY '25 results in May, we expect incremental OpEx of over GBP 50 million, including higher labor and national insurance costs and tech spend. And we're on track with our guidance of partly offsetting this through GBP 30 million of structural cost reductions and U.S. integration synergies of around GBP 10 million to GBP 12 million.

I would also highlight that we expect part of the mark-to-market charge to unwind in the second half. The contribution from new stores and annualizations of GBP 24 million in H1, Hibbett and Courir added GBP 32 million. And finally, we saw a GBP 22 million increase in net finance expense, excluding lease interest. As I mentioned earlier, this was largely due to the interest on debt component of our acquisition financing, which anniversaries in the second half.

On this slide, we set out our summary cash flows for the period. Depreciation and amortization was GBP 467 million, up GBP 120 million from the prior year. This increase was driven primarily by Hibbett and Courir, together with the impact of new stores and our supply chain investments. Lease repayments were GBP 230 million. As a result, the group's operating cash flow was GBP 546 million, up 5% versus the prior year. The change in working capital resulted in a net outflow of GBP 312 million. This was due to an increase in inventory of GBP 314 million, reflecting the rebuild of stock following the seasonally low year-end balance sheet position.

Gross capital expenditure in the period was GBP 216 million, down GBP 29 million on the prior year, reflecting the tapering off of our supply chain investment phase. Tax, interest and other cash payments were GBP 86 million, leading to an overall free cash flow of minus GBP 68 million, and that's an improvement of GBP 35 million on last year. To reiterate, given the seasonality of our business, we expect to generate significant free cash flow in the second half. Dividend payments related to last year's final dividend were GBP 34 million, and our first share buyback program of GBP 100 million completed in July. Overall, we saw a reduction in net cash of GBP 177 million, leading to net debt before lease liabilities on the balance sheet of GBP 125 million.

Turning to Slide 12 and to reiterate the continued strength of our balance sheet and cash generation. We continue to manage our inventory effectively and in a disciplined manner. Net inventory increased by 14% year-on-year. This mainly reflects the acquisition of Courir, but also proactive stock management ahead of our distribution center transitions and City Gear store conversions. Régis will provide more detail on this later. Overall, we're well positioned on inventory heading into our peak trading period.

Turning now to net debt. With cash of GBP 502 million and borrowings of GBP 627 million, our net debt at period end was GBP 125 million before lease liabilities. We expect to move to a net cash position by the end of the financial year. Factoring in IFRS 16 lease liabilities, our net debt was just over GBP 3 billion, representing net leverage of 1.7x. And taking into account the Genesis buyout option in FY '30 and FY '31, pro forma net leverage remains around investment-grade levels. In July this year, we completed a comprehensive debt refinancing. So including our new undrawn RCFs, our total liquidity at period end was just under GBP 1.4 billion.

Finally, on shareholder returns. In April, we updated on our strategy and our capital allocation priorities. And with this, a commitment to enhance shareholder returns. In accordance with these priorities and reflecting our expectation of strong free cash flow generation, we announced a second GBP 100 million share buyback program in August. We expect the program to commence in the coming days. And at current share price levels, we believe buybacks represent a compelling return on equity for shareholders. And finally, for completeness, the Board has also declared an interim dividend of 0.33p per share.

So now let me take a moment to address the impact of U.S. tariffs on our business, which we said we'd provide an update on today. The overall message here is that we see limited financial impact in FY '26, though unsurprisingly, uncertainty remains going forward. First, a reminder of our direct exposure. This is the impact on our sourcing of own brands and licensed products as well as store fixtures and fittings. Our own brand accounts for less than 10% of our U.S. sales, and we've already taken effective steps to diversify the sourcing base. As a result, the direct impact to JD of higher U.S. tariffs is not material, estimated at less than $10 million on an annualized basis.

Turning now to our indirect exposure. We spent several months closely monitoring the actions our brand partners are taking to mitigate tariff impacts and any shifts in U.S. consumer behavior. From a brand partner perspective, with a significant proportion of their sourcing concentrated in Southeast Asia, we're seeing them taking proactive steps across the supply chain to mitigate cost pressures and maintain competitive pricing. And where retail price increases have occurred, they've generally been targeted with a broadly neutral reaction from customers so far.

So based on what we've seen to date, we therefore anticipate a limited financial impact from U.S. tariffs in the current financial year. This is supported in part by inventory purchased prior to the implementation of tariffs. Looking beyond FY '26, uncertainty remains over broader tariff as well as over U.S. consumer sentiment, as you might expect. We will, of course, provide updates as and when the landscape evolves further.

So finally, on our outlook and guidance, we expect our full year profit before tax and adjusted items to be in line with current market expectations. Our H1 results demonstrate our operating and financial discipline against a tough market backdrop. You can expect more of the same in H2 with continued effective management of our costs and cash. We remain cautious on the trading environment, reflecting continued pressures on consumer finances, elevated unemployment risk and the ongoing footwear product cycle transition. Now as a reminder, as we settle into our new reporting pattern, there's no update on current trading today, and we'll report our Q3 numbers on the 20th of November. Finally, as I highlighted on the previous slide, we anticipate the financial impact from U.S. tariffs to be limited in this financial year.

So with my review concluded, let me hand back to Régis, who will provide the business update.

Thank you, Dominic. Let's move now to the business update. First, a quick reminder of our investment case. So JD Group operates on a large and global scale with footprint in over 50 countries. Our market, sports fashion, will continue to grow over time, benefiting from ongoing casualization and active lifestyle trend. JD Group is a leading player in all key geographies we operate and is targeting further market share gain, particularly in North America and Europe, where we see significant organic growth opportunity.

JD Group has a strong and agile multi-brand model, allowing us to propose the best products to our customer and to navigate trends and brand it seamlessly. JD Group is an omnichannel retailer, leveraging the best of the online and off-line world for our customer. JD Group is building the infrastructure and the governance needed for a group of our size and scale. In the last 3 years, we have invested significantly in our supply chain, in our technology as well as strengthening our system control and talent. We will, therefore, unlock operational efficiency across the group. This puts us in a position to deliver profit growth ahead of sales over the medium term.

JD Group is a highly cash-generative business with a powerful balance sheet. With disciplined capital allocation, we have headroom to invest for growth while delivering enhanced return to our shareholders that translates to a GBP 200 million share buyback program for this year.

Everything we do, everything JD does, starts with the consumer, the JD customer, the young customer, the 16 to 24 years old customer. JD's greatest strength is our ability to see the world through the mindset of our customers. Our close relationship with the young customer gives us a strong partnership with the brands we sell. This unique brand partnership provides us the ability to offer the latest and the greatest product to our customer. Our concept, the JD Theater, is modern, vibrant, multi-brand, premium, mixing sport fashion and music. We leverage the magic within our store to bring our proposition to life in an environment that elevate our brand partner stories and delight our customer.

Before you ask me the question, how is our customer feeling right now? I would say that the current level of uncertainty is impacting customer confidence across our different markets. But more importantly for us, as we have said previously, unemployment is a key factor for our young customer. And we are starting to see early negative signs on it, especially Europe, U.K. Something for us to monitor in the coming months. Meanwhile, when we are delivering new exciting product, we see our customer coming into our store.

Talking about product, let's turn to a very familiar slide, which demonstrates the power of our multi-brand model and our agility to navigate trends and brand it. Looking at the mix of our sales in footwear on the left and apparel on the right. First, you will see that we are not building our range per brand. We are doing it by style, by category to focus on customer need. If you take footwear, we have 4 key categories. It's a simplified version of what we do internally.

You have running, performance and retro basketball, skate, we have included Terrace in this, classic or tennis and other. And you can see the movement between the category. For example, retro basketball went from 20% of our sales in financial year '20 to almost 40% of our sales 2 years ago, before slipping back in the last 18 months. On the other hand, running has moved back above the 50% mark where it was in financial year '20, especially with the development of performance running with On, Hoka, Salomon, adidas EVO, and the new Nike running product, Vomero 18 and Pegasus. Thanks to our agility, to our flexible merchandising, to our buying excellence, we are navigating, anticipating the product cycle, the change of trend and the evolution of branding it. And this is critical in the current challenging product cycle. As we always say, we will win with the winner.

Turning to apparel. You can see how we have pivoted our offer towards performance apparel and street fashion. Performance apparel, mostly exclusive product designed by us, designed for us with the brand, show our agility to capture and create growth by extending our reach and leveraging our brand relationship with a big player and with emerging brands. This has been done very quickly as we have more than doubled our sales in performance every year in the last 3 years and grew over 5x over the last 5 years.

Our growth in street fashion is another example of our agility to extend to new category by developing our own brands to respond to customer trends. As you have seen from Dominic in our H1 results, our focus on apparel gives us a unique competitive advantage, and our investment in space, resources and talent is clearly paying off. Our apparel strategy is a key differentiator, a key competitive advantage in every market we operate, and it brings to life our unique lifestyle proposition.

In the first half of our financial year, we have made strong progress against our key mid- and long-term priorities. In North America, our focus is to develop the JD brand, to leverage our complementary fascia, and to deliver the back-office synergy following the acquisition of Hibbett. In Europe, we are leveraging our multi-fascia strategy to gain profitable market share with JD to address a young customer, Courir to reach more female, older customer, and Sprinter and Cosmos to a more family sport customer.

We focus on key country, France, Iberia, Italy, Benelux, Greece and Poland, where we have a leading market position to drive efficiency and profitability. We are building a more efficient supply chain with the automation of our JD European DC in Ireland. In the U.K., our focus is to have fewer, bigger and better stores, to be more productive and to optimize our central overheads.

We have made a lot of progress in the first half of the year, which I will now take you through in more details. In U.S., we are developing the JD brand, gaining again market share in H1 and increasing the awareness of our brand. Our #1 brand awareness action is to open stores. In H1, we have opened a net of 52 stores in the U.S. This includes 22 conversions from Finish Line to JD Fashion, delivering on average more than 20% uplift in sales.

Second priority is to target key markets in the U.S. with community marketing activation, local advertising like billboards, buses, local sponsorship and ambassador. Third priority is about national influencer targeting digital media, performance, search and shopping. Mike will provide and can provide more color on the program during the Q&A session. As a result, as you can see on the slide, we are delivering a significant increase in national aid brand awareness from 34% 2 years ago to 59%. And this is even more marked in our key battleground markets such as New York.

More impressively and impactful, 26% of the consumer are purchasing JD, almost triple versus 3 years ago. North America is the largest market in the world, and it is now our largest market, accounting for almost 40% of group sales in H1. Our different fascias provide us with a full reach of the American customer from coast to coast with DTLR on the East Coast to Shoe Palace on the West Coast, from top mall key trading part with JD to local community with Hibbett from all ethnicity and all gender. The acquisition of Hibbett has been transformative as it gives us an extensive geographic and democratic reach in U.S., creating scale for our strategic partner, the large and emerging sportswear brand.

We see great opportunity in North America for the development of both the JD brand and our complementary fascias. As part of Hibbett acquisition, we acquired City Gear stores, a chain of 200 city specialist stores situated in the Southeast with a similar customer base than DTLR. As explained in the details in April, we will convert all the City Gear stores, the 198 stores, to DTLR, giving us an opportunity to improve our sales and profit.

City Gear has a return of USD 250 per square foot, whilst DTLR average more than double at around USD 500. So a lot of value to harvest for us. We have already transferred the City Gear operation to DTLR back in June, and the system cut over on time, on budget and with no issue, another demonstration of our operational excellence. At the same time, we are starting the conversion program with an initial 6-store conversion trial. As of last week, that shows a strong uplift in sales around the plus 60%.

Second priority is synergies and leveraging our scale in the U.S. As mentioned by Dominic, we are on track in terms of action and the planned synergies. On back office and system change, our U.S. businesses are moving quickly with the ongoing implementation of Workday for finance and HR, leveraging our Hibbett expertise. With our new scales in North America, we are starting to see significant benefit in areas such as transport, logistics, insurance, and we are bringing learning from JD to develop Hibbett range and merchandising. Hibbett delivered a positive Q2 like-for-like, the first for some time.

Another source of synergy, the supply chain of the distribution center. We are converting our U.S. DC to become multi-fascia to deliver significant cost savings in the future as well as a quicker replenishment for our store by covering the country from East to West. Our first multi-fascia DC will be live beginning of next financial year with a new West Coast DC in Morgan Hill, near San Jose, and to be followed quickly by Alabaster, the historical DC of Hibbett in Alabama.

Turning to the development in Europe. We are leveraging our multi-fascia strategy to gain profitable market share. We have refined our plan and focus on key countries: France, Iberia, Italy, Benelux, Greece, Poland, where we have a leading market position to drive scale, efficiency and profitability. As mentioned in April, Germany, the Nordics have been more challenging due to high cost to operate and less appetite from the consumer for sports fashion. So we have taken this learning and are directing future investment on the market where we see more room for profitable growth. In H1, we have focused JD store opening program in Spain, Italy, France and Portugal with a net increase of 35 stores. Overall, I'm pleased to report that we gained market share in the first 6 months.

The integration of Courir is proceeding according to plan. Courir operates 307 stores across 6 European countries, including its own market in France, where a majority of the stores are located, as well as 33 franchise stores across 9 further countries. We see the potential to develop Courir in Europe by leveraging our existing infrastructure. We have successfully entered Italy in the first half with 3 stores opening, and we are preparing to reenter Portugal. We also have our European sporting goods fascia in Iberia, Greece and Cyprus. Those business provide us with scale, infrastructure and a different customer. In H1, they saw sales growth of plus 1.2% and 6 net new store openings, taking the total store number to almost 400.

And finally, an update on our European supply chain project, a long project around Heerlen DC in the Netherlands continue to ramp up, and it will launch automation in the coming days. In fact, on Monday, we will start the automation. Initially, this will be for store replenishment with online to follow in the first half of next year. To give you an idea of the scale of the operation, the target is a throughput of 100 million units a year. Automation will unlock significant efficiency within Europe, including faster fulfillment, better stock availability and a reduction in the fulfillment cost per unit. It will eliminate our current dual running cost in Europe and the unnecessary cost and duty of shipping to Europe from the U.K. To minimize the risk of disruption during our upcoming peak trading period, we will maintain our dual running with our site in Belgium until beginning of next year. And then as Dominic said earlier, we are on track to deliver over GBP 20 million of cost benefits relating to the supply chain double running costs across financial year '27 and '28.

Before we turn to look at the U.K., I want to give you a behind the scene tour of the build of what is our biggest JD store in the world in Manchester's iconic Trafford Centre. We believe it is also on track to become one of the world's largest sports fashion store by sales with a triple figure turnover in U.S. dollar. This destination store opened in June and set a new benchmark in innovation and merchandising for JD worldwide. It will bring to life the JD Theater, as mentioned earlier, and this small video gives you just a taste. Enjoy it.

[Presentation]

It is a 4,000 square meter store. It means that we could play with a lot of new brands, new products. Trafford Centre has 19 customer engagement areas. This includes customization, sneaker refurbishment, social media recording studio, even a barber, not for me. And I'm looking forward to host you and to see you in JD Theater of Dream in Manchester.

As you know, U.K. is our most established market. As a result, our primary focus is on enhanced productivity, larger through fewer, bigger, better store, optimizing the store footprint in the best location and reinvesting in the best location and in our current estate to make sure that our store continues to be the best in town. In line with our strategy in H1, we saw a net reduction in U.K. store numbers of 13, but an overall increase in selling space.

Productivity is also about driving operational efficiency and cost savings. So to highlight just a few for you. With our DC, we are now seeing the benefit of closing Derby last year and reviewing our transport costs, bringing in further savings and driving more efficiency in Kingsway.

Then we have some of our tech infrastructure key projects starting to land. Our new HR system, Dayforce, has launched in the U.K., which will start to bring scheduling benefit in store as well as overhead saving in our head office. We are also using technology to support both colleagues and customers. We are, as we speak, implementing RFID in all our stores to facilitate click and collect, ship from store transaction, and making replenishment much more efficient for our people, saving critical minutes in store tax. This is alongside the self-service checkout and mobile point-of-sales terminals that we are starting to roll out. And I will add one that Dominic is particularly proud of, reducing our audit fees, having enhanced our process and system in finance.

As a final update, we see loyalty as a key driver of our sales. Our now established global loyalty program, JD STATUS is progressing well. And in the U.K. alone, it's capturing more than 25% of our turnover. STATUS serves as a foundation for developing a more targeted and personalized relationship with our customers. In H1, we ran test of personalized offer during campaign period, which resulted in significant incremental sales. This gives us a strong indication regarding the scope and the potential for future development.

As a conclusion, in a tough trading environment, we are staying focused on our strategic priorities, our operating and financial discipline. This is demonstrated by our market share gain in H1 and our operating cash flow up. We are cautious about the trading environment in the second half of the year. We expect full year profit before tax and adjusted items to be in line with current market expectation. We are focused on delivering a strong free cash flow, and we have confidence in the medium-term growth prospect of our industry. We are reaffirming our commitment to enhance shareholder return, and we will soon start our second GBP 100 million share buyback program.

Before I hand over for our Q&A session, I'd like to thank all my colleagues for their hard work and dedication. Their commitment and their agility are moving us forever forward. Thank you. Mike, over to you.

All right. Thank you very much, Régis. We're going to start the Q&A now. I'll wait for my colleagues with the microphones. So Lorraine, could you start with Grace, please?

It's Grace Smalley from Morgan Stanley. My first question would just be on apparel. You mentioned there the improved product assortment after a period of weakness. I'd just be interested to hear more details on what exactly has changed in the apparel assortment? What's making you more optimistic on that category? And Régis, I think in the past, you've spoken about a more competitive environment in apparel, just how you see that competitive landscape today?

And then my second question would be on the footwear side. I love the new slide with the different categories. If you could just talk about, based on your consumer insights, what you're seeing from the brand's product pipeline into next year? How you see those trends evolving? Do you expect running to continue to take market share? What you're seeing in basketball, terrace and skate as well would be very interesting.

I think the best to answer is Michael Armstrong.

Yes. I think, apparel -- I mean, if you remember right, 12 months ago, we were sitting telling you the apparel market was really challenging. And I think what we find is because there was a bit of a shift in the market a couple of years ago and particularly with the bigger brands, we work on generally about an 18-month time line. So there's a lag between when the market shifts for us to be able to capitalize on that shift to get at the market, the shift in the market with the bigger brands. We've just seen the brands catch up with the consumer. That's really all it is.

We had a really strong -- we still have a really strong business in the performance categories, as you can see on the slides. And we've had some new entrants come in, in that space, which have worked extremely well for us like Trailberg, Able, Montirex still continues to be amazing. We've got a really good business with Under Armour. And on the fashion, more lifestyle side of things, that's where we're seeing the real upside. Adidas is looking really good on apparel. We introduced a new own brand called Unlike Humans. So there's just a lot going on. It's just quite an exciting place right now.

And on footwear, as Régis mentioned, we're still just managing out of this period where we had 3 really big items dominating the footwear business to a marketplace where consumers want to try and test new products. There's a lot of new -- not new brands, but brands that are reestablishing themselves in the marketplace. Again, because of the supply chain time lines, we're not necessarily fully able to get at everything that we would want to get at today, because there's a 12-, 18-month lag on everything. Over time, we'll start to catch up on that stuff.

But what we're seeing right now is still the market is very fluid. You can see the backdrop is generally pretty challenging, the appetite isn't necessarily the same as it was during the COVID years. So getting those newer models and brands up to speed as quickly as the big franchises that they claim is still a challenge for us. I think the other thing worth mentioning is, obviously, we went through a bit of a honeymoon period with women's footwear. She was consuming a lot of product, and that softened. So that has had a bit of an impact on us as well.

Okay. Let's move to Jonathan at Peel Hunt.

Jonathan Pritchard at Peel Hunt. Just on the brand awareness point, obviously, you've outlined to a degree what you're doing. But what really has changed, because those numbers are pretty impressive that you've gone from, I think, 34% to 59%. What has been the golden bullet as it were for that?

Again, I think we just mentioned store openings. We've got a good footprint in all the best malls, now in the majority of the best malls. We've opened a few new flagship stores, Las Vegas as an example. But I think a lot of the great work the team have been doing over the last 2 years has started -- we started to benefit from that, particularly in the communities. The brand awareness, aided brand awareness in the key markets for us, New York, Texas, Miami is significantly higher than that. And a lot of that is around the work we do in the communities, it's local sponsorships, activations, partnerships. We're just starting to benefit from that now.

Again, just to follow on from Grace's question, and it does follow on a little bit from what you've just said. But apparel, the mindset of the U.S. consumer for you and apparel, obviously, it's pretty much half and half of sales in the U.K., getting there in Europe, but quite a bit behind that in the States. Do people still -- have people started to genuinely think of JD as an apparel retailer? Or is it still a work in progress?

The category in the U.S. is still very much dominated by footwear, but we are building momentum. The apparel business has been the growth driver for us this year in the U.S. with the backdrop of the challenges that we have in footwear being the same in Europe as they are in the U.S. So we think we are starting to make really good progress.

I think in U.S., it's linked to the market leader, which is only footwear. So I think that the more people know JD, the more they understand the fact that we are not a footwear and we are full lifestyle. So the awareness is helping the apparel business, too. So the two work together.

We go to Richard Chamberlain from RBC.

Richard Chamberlain, RBC. Three for me, please. I wondered if you can say how Europe online performed in the period. I appreciate you've obviously got the automation benefit still to come through. And then again, on Europe, Régis, what are the plans for the Courir store estate going forward? How do you see that shaping?

And then third, I was intrigued by your comment in the U.S. about sort of neutral reaction from consumers to price increases or tariff-induced price increases there. Do you think we're going through a sort of temporary window where consumers just haven't reacted yet, so those price increases, or is there something else behind that, like an improving product pipeline or something that's actually still stimulating demand and having to offset those price increases?

So European online is doing well, I think, but we are starting from a low base. So I think that we are -- we have implemented in the last 18 months much more ship from store and that's created a big difference, because in the past we were shipping a lot of things from U.K. So we were not competitive in terms of time to get to the consumer. So we've seen a growth in terms of our online business in Europe thanks to a better service. And the thing that is coming with Heerlen now coming to first half will become to fulfill online order. We'll continue to do that. So we are just playing catch-up. But we're starting from a low base, but growing.

In terms of store estate for Courir, I think what we see is that Courir will continue to develop out of France. So France, we maxed out in terms of number of stores. So we covered all, except the one that we had to divest because of the antitrust. So now we are re-coming to the same part, which it's stupid things around that, but that's life, that's the way it works. And we will expand in Italy and Portugal. So Portugal, it's to be back in Portugal; and Italy, it's a growth country for us. For JD, it's a key country. And I think that we see the benefit of expanding our offer a little bit to offer the same as we offer in France, in Spain, in Portugal, with Courir and JD. So that's the plan.

In terms of the price impact, so as you know, what has happened in the U.S., it's a targeted price increase. When the product is good, price is not the issue. So I think what is still to be seen is what will impact when, because at the end, everything will translate into price. For the moment, it has been targeted on products that everyone feels that it will support a price increase. What will happen when a lot of other price will start to come to the system? That's another question, because for the moment -- and it's more not an industry question, it's more an economic question. I think that a lot of U.S. companies have really swallowed the tariff at one point of time, this will come to the consumer, what will impact at that time. But what we know, and that's the last 3 years' experience, that the U.S. consumer is the most resilient in the world. They just keep buying. So hopefully, it will continue.

Let's go to Ashton Olds.

A couple of questions from me. I guess the first one, just on the European margin. I think you mentioned that you get around a 20 million benefit from Heerlen. I guess what's the road map towards high single-digit margins beyond that? Is it cost out? Or is it sales led?

The second question I have is just on sort of the online approach. You mentioned that gross margin at the group level was down 40 basis points from investment in price. Online sales were down slightly. I appreciate the market is not really helping. But just could you elaborate on your approach to online and whether there's more that you can do there?

And then I think Dominic, you mentioned with regards to tariffs that you helped by purchasing ahead of tariffs. I'm not sure if I got that right. But I suppose as we look into FY '27, when you are purchasing at more normal rates, what should we think of the moving parts there? Is it gross margin down? Or is it more pricing to come?

So I think Dominic will take the first and the third, and I will take the online at the end.

Okay. So I mean in terms of European margin, it's a multifaceted story. We obviously saw the half 1 margin there. Overall, it's around 4%, 5% operating margin. There are a number of things we're doing, which give us confidence. We can see that improving over time. I think the first is sales led. As we grow scale in the market, we're taking market share, we'll start to see more sales on a fixed cost base, so that flows through in part.

Second is efficiency, and that comes in things like supply chain. So at the moment, we are bearing significant costs by having 3 warehouses in Europe for JD, plus shipping stuff from the U.K. as we bring Heerlen online over the next -- before peak for stores next year for online delivery. We start then to step away from the double running costs and distribution in the U.K. will always remain a little bit, but in the grand scheme of things, not very much. That will play through to a better cost base and a more efficient cost base, but also better service to customers.

As Régis said, at the moment, in some cases, if you buy something in Lisbon, you may have to wait 6 days for it to get to you from Rochdale, which isn't a great service. As we do more of that through Heerlen, that will improve the customer piece.

And then the final piece is picking up on what Régis said around being more targeted in the markets where we invest in. As we learn more about where our concept resonates better with customers, we can tailor our investment to make sure we're getting the best returns on our investment and taking action to improve performance where it's slightly weaker. So a combination of those things over a period of time should see us having the European margin moving closer to that sort of higher single digit that we see in some of our other markets.

Should I do tariffs as well?

Yes.

So just on the tariff point, there's always a lead time when you buy goods. So when you're buying for Q3, a lot of that was bought well before even the tariffs were announced. So that means we do get the benefit of that. And I think it's the same in many industries, you get the benefit of that in this financial year for us.

Looking through to FY '27, I think it's too early to tell. And I think as we go through and look at what our buys are going to be, look at what our terms and conditions with our brand partners are going to be, we'll have a better feel. So we'll provide an update on that in the new year.

Concerning online, I think that it's mainly -- so as I said before, I think online in U.S. and Europe is doing well. I think in U.K., it has been more challenging. And I think that especially in terms of traffic and conversion, and that's where we have been investing more in price in order to make sure that we are competitive in a very promotional market. So that's the thing. And as it is weighted -- the U.K. weight is much higher, that has an impact on the online margin.

Okay. Let's move to the side, please. Dom, let's go to Will in the middle, and then Kate Calvert in front.

William Woods from Bernstein. Two questions. The first one is just on the ongoing shift in the footwear product cycle. You mentioned women's footwear softening. Do you think there's anything more fundamental going on in that cycle? Or do you think it's just the classic brand and style cycle happening? And I suppose when you look at the apparel business, do you think that cycle still applies there. So we'll go through the same with sports fashion and performance, that you've grown quite well, in the next couple of years?

And then the second one is, obviously, you've done a lot of work on U.K. productivity through few bigger stores, customization and loyalty, et cetera. Are you applying any of those learnings to the U.S. and Europe? And I suppose I'm particularly thinking about the new stores that you're opening. Are you changing what you're doing because of what you've learned from the U.K. at this stage?

Mike, I would...

Yes. I mean I think with reference to women's, I mean, women generally compared to men have a lot more choice, and they like to change the mind more. And as I said, they're consuming a lot of sports shoes and she's finding other things to buy right now. That's just the nature of women's fashion, right? We'll have another up-cycle sometime soon, but we don't know when. We'll just take it when it comes.

I think when it comes to apparel cycle, all I can say is we've got a very adaptable business model. We've got a wide range of brands that we can access. We have the ability to build what we need to build from a product point of view with pretty much every brand. We have complete flexibility in that respect, which again, none of our competitors have that. So we're very agile. And we have our own brand portfolio and licensed brand portfolio as well that chip in and help us deliver good things like speed to market and sort of a pricing architecture as well.

And second question around the learning from U.K.

Yes, the stores -- I mean, I think specifically to the U.K., how consumers are shopping is clearly changing. And I think especially when you look at JD as a business, and we have seen some fairly significant price increases in our world over the last 3 or 4 years. So I think the expectations of the consumer now have changed slightly when they are buying a pair of shoes, which is GBP 150, they want a great experience. And we're also seeing, in particular, the traffic declines primarily are coming from high street locations, and we are seeing a big shift. We're not seeing the same declines, we're not necessarily seeing a big shift into the retail parks and the mega malls, and it's really the retail parks that have grown the most within our store estate over the last 2 or 3 years, which has grown the space significantly.

The learning from Trafford Centre for us is that it's the same point, consumers just want a great experience. And what we have found is the impact of creating that fabulous store has been far greater than what we expected, outwards of like 30-mile catchment area. So there's a lot of learnings in that for the future in terms of how we look at the store estate generally.

I suppose, does that change the U.S. and European strategy? Or do you think you're just experiencing slightly different trends in the market?

It doesn't change, it influences and helps us maybe make some different decisions in the future.

Kate Calvert from Investec. A couple from me. First one, sorry to return to inflation and tariffs, but what sort of level of inflation are the brands putting through at the moment in the U.S.? And do you think it's enough to have offset the sort of the initial 10% increase? So we're kind of yet to see the August increases. And what sort of inflation is going through in Europe and the U.K. at the moment?

And in terms of my second question is just on gross margin. Gross margin ex acquisitions was down 40 bps. I suppose the question is really on direction in terms of the trend of the gross margin because obviously, apparel has been much stronger, and you have gone through quite a few years of good full price sales. So do you think we're kind of back to a more normalized gross margin post-COVID?

I will do the first one and you do the second one. So I think on inflation, I think that, as we said before, roughly what happened with tariff is 1/3 has been swallowed by the manufacturer, 1/3 has been through the supply chain and the manufacturer, and 1/3 to the consumer. That's roughly what has happened. So the part which has been -- and in total, the tariff impact for our industry is on average a sort of 10% if you put everything to the consumer. So what has been passed to the consumer is around 2% to 3% if you take that on total. So that's type of magnitude. But that has been done on some products, not all, and with a very targeted view and has no impact in terms of volume.

The question will be, the 70%, which has not been passed to the consumer, at one point of time will be in the system, when you go to new products and those. But that is what will impact at that moment. And I think we are more -- we are not so nervous about our industry. I'm more nervous about the global impact in terms of what happens to the U.S. consumer when they discover that everything goes up in terms of price, because that will happen over time. It's not happening now, but it's going to happen. That's a key question that we don't have the answer. But for our industry, I think the way it has been managed, I think it has been well managed, and I think that we've seen no impact for the time being.

So on the margin point, Kate, I think in the first half, the 40 basis points really reflects more tactical moves than something structural. And if you look at where it happened, it's sort of online in Europe, where we just need to be more -- chose to be more competitive in a more promotional market. And in the U.S., something we talked about at the year-end, I think, around Finish Line, which is as it winds down, is less differentiated. So price plays more of a role than would be the case in JD and some of our other fascias.

I think you hinted that, but maybe didn't mean that with more apparel, is that lower margin. Actually, apparel and footwear, similar margins for us. And apparel is supported by having a higher proportion of own label. And as Mike said earlier on, they play a really crucial role in the overall offering we bring to customers, unlike humans and others. So that itself isn't the driver. Actually, the main driver is really the product cycle. In a cycle where people want the product, we're a full price retailer, we get the margins and we get the price. Where it's slightly softer, you just have to be -- you have to respond to that a little bit at the margins, and that's what we're seeing. So I don't think there's a structural shift. I think it is just reflecting where we are at this point in time on some of our products.

Can I just come back on the gross margin question just in terms of the full price sales. So I mean as you came out of COVID, because there's a lot of stock shortage, you had very high full price sales. I know you're being tactical at the moment, but do you think the underlying has got back to a more normalized level just generally in the industry and everything?

Yes. I think -- I mean, the position that we're in just now, there is a shift slightly back towards apparel in the mix, which will be beneficial. We don't know how long that's going to -- that run is going to maintain itself, obviously. But I'll just reiterate what Dominic said, it really does just come down to the product cycle and the appetite for that product at full price. What we're seeing right now is the good stuff is really good. The stuff in the middle is slightly more challenging to sell at full price. We would like to assume that if the market can course correct and, along with our brand partners, we can drive that demand into new franchises, that will see a higher level of full price sell-through. There's no question. It does come down to the brands and the ability to create energy in the marketplace as much as anything.

And to be precise, on your question, which is around COVID, I think it's already done. So it's no more the COVID where we were at one point. So I think it has been going down slightly, but surely. So I think we are in a stable, yes.

Let's move to Warwick behind you.

I'm Warwick Okines, BNP Paribas. One question for Dominic actually. Could you talk a bit more about the H2 profit expectations? First half PBT down about GBP 50 million, second half implied about plus GBP 10 million. What drives this swing? You talked about a few items like mark-to-market finance charges and Hibbett synergies. But maybe you could just flesh out that swing, please.

Good question, Warwick. So look, I mean, if you look at the first half and the profit bridge helps there and some of the things that you saw, the headwinds there. We'll still get a benefit from acquisitions, slightly less in the second half. Obviously, we've got Courir coming in for a few months. Interest was a drag in the first half. Actually, as we anniversary the acquisitions, that could become a slight positive in the second half. So half-on-half, quite a big swing. Mark-to-market, we expect some of that to unwind in the second half. So again, half-on-half, quite a big swing.

And then new space with Trafford and others coming online, we've had a lot of sort of preopening costs related to that in the first half. We should see that stepping up a bit into the second half. And I think the phasing of our OpEx synergies is weighted towards the second half rather than the first half. Although as you saw on the slide, I think we've done a very good job in the first half in terms of neutralizing some of those headwinds. So taking all of those things together, actually, you see a step forward in those points, in some cases, mechanical, offsetting -- more than offsetting the ongoing pressure from like-for-like and margin through the second half.

Just before we go to Anne next to you, Warwick, a quick question on the lines from Richard Taylor at Barclays. A question for Dominic is that can you explain why the Genesis option has been revalued upwards by GBP 160 million?

Yes, I can. At the full year, we explained that as a result of the change in the payment dates, we've moved it out from '25, '26, starting in '25 to '30, '31, that would result in about a GBP 250 million increase that was in the annual report. The actual increase at the first half is GBP 163 million. So we've got the GBP 250 million uplift, but then there's a currency impact on the overall option, bringing that down to GBP 163 million for the first half. So broadly in line with what we explained.

I think you have been clear. So just for everyone because it's -- we have the option to buy back the 20% that is owned by the Mersho family. And the initial agreement was to do that in 4 years, from this year to 2028.

'29.

'29. We just moved back to 2 years between 2030 and '31. That's correct. So that's what Dominic was referring to. And we did that in order to manage our cash flow and to manage the best way to do that.

That's the context.

It's Anne Critchlow from Berenberg. A question on tech infrastructure. So I appreciate you're in a catch-up mode at the moment on infrastructure. But just wondering what the potential might be to invest in, say, systems for pricing and promotions or allocation of product by store, various AI systems we're hearing about from other retailers. And also whether there's any time line for an RFID rollout from the U.K. to the rest of the world, and any implications in CapEx for that?

Yes. So I think on tech, we've done a lot. And I think that unfortunately, it is mostly OpEx than CapEx. So we have done -- the big one was our HR system in the U.K., which is done, which is Dayforce. We are looking at finance system and HR system in U.S., which is Workday. So that's as we speak. In terms of our merchandising tool, we are looking at the implementation of o9, which will include AI tools to do that. We are not so keen on pricing and all that stuff for the time being, because I think we -- we believe that with our buyer, we are doing the job and a fantastic job around that.

And RFID is that the rollout is in U.K., but will go to the rest of the world just after. So it's just that we start everything in U.K. So we are pretty advanced. There will be the self-checkout, the same. Most of that is OpEx. So that's why our OpEx has been inflated by around GBP 20 million in the last 2 years around system and all that stuff. So it's not a big impact on CapEx, but a significant impact in terms of our OpEx.

And please can you pass to Alison.

Alison Lygo from Deutsche Numis. So just a couple of mine left. Can I ask on the working capital, please, just in terms of the stock build we saw in the first half. Could you talk a bit about where that's gone in terms of the stock? And I suppose what you're thinking about in terms of requirement for H2, particularly in terms of anything further required for investing or pivoting the range in the new acquisitions?

And then the second one, just on City Gear and that change into DTLR. So interest as to how much you're kind of changing in that proposition. Are we talking here about -- like you're talking about some relatively large uplifts. Are you really changing the range? What are you doing in terms of store fit out? Yes, and I guess what the kind of potential CapEx behind that might look like?

Yes, I will do the City Gear and you do the stock one. So City Gear, so what we are doing with City Gear. So we have done a test of 6 stores where we have done a full conversion with new merchandising, new refurbishment, in fact, and that sort of costs around GBP 200,000 per store. And that is with the full rebranding and merchandising. What we have done for all the estate is to put that under the management of the DTLR team. So that implies the fact that we are slowly but surely changing the range, but we do that in a very -- when the product gets out of stock, we bring new products. So that is what we're doing.

And there is a limit around that, and that's why we will have a program beginning of next year to refurbish a significant part of the estate and doing what we have done with the 6 tech stores. But we didn't want to rush too quickly. We just wanted to make sure that we do the system, the management and all that stuff in order to put the basis before doing a conversion.

We learned a lot from the Finish Line program. And what we are applying there is what has been very successfully applied by JD team when we move from Finish Line to JD. We do the same recipe and with the same potential, because you have a double turnover per square foot. So there is no reason. And the level of investment is lower because DTLR concept is much less sophisticated than the JD one. So if you want to model it, it's USD 250,000 to invest in a store and with an uplift, which for the moment is around 50%, 60%.

On the stock point, yes, I mean, stock was up 14% in the first half. A large part of that was Courir, which we didn't have in the numbers last year. But we also were carrying more stock as we went into the first half. We've got quite a bit of distribution center changes coming. So we want to make sure we're well set up for those, and that does sometimes result in a sort of slightly elevated position.

And just picking up on the City Gear piece, as we start to range those stores more with what DTLR and Shoe Palace use versus what they had, you end up with a slight sort of overlap. But that's manageable, and it's something we've done in the past. I think heading towards peak, there's no material shift in pivoting in terms of stock we're bringing in. We're actually coming to the biggest part of our year now. And as we go into that, we feel comfortable overall with the quality of the stock that we have. And the real position to look at our stock is at the year-end once we've been through peak.

Okay. We've got time for 2 more. So we'll go with Wendy, first of all.

Wendy Liu from JPMorgan. I have two, please. One is a follow-up on the footwear cycle. You mentioned about there's a couple of promising smaller franchises. I was wondering if you can expand on that. Are you talking about specific brands? Or are you talking about particular categories? Is it running? Is it more lifestyle? So this is question number one.

Number two, I understand you don't comment on current trading, but I was wondering if you can share a few observations about what you're seeing in different markets in terms of customer behavior. You mentioned about early signs of unemployment in the U.K. and the U.S., if I hear that correctly. I was wondering if you can expand on that. And I guess, broadly, what are you seeing in the various markets from what you can see today?

Yes, I will start for the current -- yes, as you say, we don't update on current trading. I think what we said around customer, we see the level of uncertainty is high and which is never good for consumption. And we know that the key KPI we are looking at is unemployment, because our young customer is the first one to be impacted by that. And for the time being, nothing has happened, but we see the signs are more negative than positive. That's what we are at. So for the time being, it has not been -- nothing has happened on this side, but we're really looking at that, and that will be a negative for us if that happened. So that's what we flagged. I think that at the same moment, and we are in an industry where it's about fashion, it's about new products. So if the new product is good, consumers find the money to buy it. So that's what I will say. I think on the footwear, I think that...

Yes. I think you mentioned a lot of the things that are happening in the market already. We're seeing the market shift back to where it was around 2019, 2020, running back to being the dominant category. The brands that play in that space are -- we know who they are. You've got a few of the smaller brands gaining about momentum just now, Saucony, Salomon, those guys. But really, it's On running, ASICS, New Balance, Adidas are doing some really good stuff in the performance categories. And we've seen some new product from Nike that's hit the ground running.

Wendy, could you pass to David right behind you?

David Hughes from Shore Capital. Just on the U.S. and obviously, the margin drop, you talked about a part of that being driven by the Finish Line conversions. Could you just touch on what part of the conversion is driving that margin drop, and how long you kind of expect that to carry on since you're still going through with quite a lot of conversions left to do? And also with the City Gear conversions, would we accept similar margin pressure in the U.S. as a result?

No, what we are seeing is not the conversion that is driving the margin. Finish Line is our biggest online business in the U.S. so far. It's no more. It was still 3 months ago, now it's JD, but it has been -- so on this Finish Line online business, that's where -- because the brand doesn't have any more resonance with the consumer less store. This is where we have been more aggressive promotionally to drive sales. That's what we were referring. So it's not about the conversion. It's more that the brand City Gear website doesn't exist anymore. So we will not have this issue.

But our biggest online business for a long time has been Finish Line in the U.S. And this is where we see being more challenging for us, because we have no more store presence, or the store presence is reducing. So the appetite for the consumer for the Finish Line brand is reducing. So in order to drive volume, we need to be more aggressive on promotions. That's what we're referring to. So it's not about -- but the good news is that JD now website in the U.S. is bigger than Finish Line, which is a great achievement of the team.

Any final questions still from the from the floor. There's nothing on the lines either. So in that case, we will close the meeting there. So thanks very much for joining us, everyone. I appreciate your support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.