Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to SSP Group Q4 trading update. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question- and- answer session through the phone lines, and instructions will follow at that time. I would like to remind all participants this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Patrick Coveney, Group CEO, to begin the presentation. Thank you, and good morning, everybody. I'm Patrick Coveney, the Group CEO of SSP. Thank you for joining us as we run through the trading update that we released this morning, which covered our Q4 trading period and provided tighter guidance for FY 2026 full year. I'm joined on the call this morning by Geert Verellen, our Group CFO, and together we'll take your questions after I cover the key points. The messages that we would like you to take from today's update are, one, we delivered a resilient Q4 trading performance with group like-for-like in the quarter of 4%. Two, we're on track to deliver full-year earnings per share of GBP 0.14. That would be an 18% year-on-year improvement, and it's in line with market expectations. Three, we're executing well in Europe, with operating profit margin expected to rise to approximately 3% from the 2.2% level that we had last year. Four, we've made significant progress embedding stronger and more sustainable cash generation across the business and expect to deliver a very material underlying improvement year-on-year. Albeit we acknowledge that our current estimate of GBP 70 million free cash flow post-interest is below our recently guided GBP 100 million figure. I'll explain the change in perspective in a minute. Five, we anticipate a material strengthening of group return on capital. Six, with leverage returning towards the lower end of our medium-term range, we are today launching a new share buyback of GBP 50 million. Those are the key points, and I'll now walk through these in more detail. Let me start with the highlights from the trading in our fourth quarter. Overall, group sales in the fourth quarter grew by 4% on a constant currency basis, including like-for-like growth of 4%. This performance was delivered against a backdrop of continued disruption in passenger volumes across Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean following the Middle Eastern conflict. While those headwinds have persisted throughout the second half of our financial year, our broad group portfolio has demonstrated its resilience with the strength of the performance elsewhere in the group, and particularly in the U.K., helping to absorb that impact. In North America, sales in the quarter increased by 4%, supported by like-for-like growth of 2%. Against a backdrop of more subdued passenger volumes than we anticipated, which you will have seen from the TSA passenger data, we successfully focused on sales growth initiatives, enabling us to still outperform the market there. In Continental Europe overall, sales were flat, but with an encouraging like-for-like growth rate of 3%. Importantly, we completed the final stage of our exit from the German motorway service business during the quarter, and we are on track on all fronts with the delivery of our restructuring plan for European rail. In the U.K. and Ireland, we again delivered market-leading performance in the quarter with like-for-like sales growth of 9% on the back of strong trading over the peak summer period, reflecting the ongoing improvements we've made to our customer propositions across airports and rail stations. In Asia- Pacific, India and EEME, against a difficult background, sales increased by 8%, driven by strong net gains with like-for-like sales of 1%. While we're pleased to report that passenger volumes in the Gulf markets have risen quarter- on- quarter to now trade at 90% of prior levels, traffic in the neighboring travel corridors of the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia- Pacific and India continue to reflect lower local and connecting passenger volumes across the network. Turning now to the full year outlook. Clearly, there are still many moving parts before we close our books and report our final numbers in December. But for now, we can say, based on our performance through the year, we expect to deliver earnings per share of approximately GBP 0.14 at actual exchange rates, up 18% year-on-year, or at constant exchange rates of more than 20% year-on-year, which is in line with market expectations and comfortably within our guided range. Moving to the components of that. We expect operating profit to be slightly lower than originally planned at GBP 230 million approximately, including the impact I've just described from more subdued passenger numbers than we had anticipated in North America through the peak summer period. At the net income level, though, we expect to offset this through significantly and sustainably lower minority interest charges as we make good progress with our program of actions to optimize our JV model in multiple respects across the U.S. This program is refining our ways of working with existing partners, sets up new contracts at more targeted and typically lower levels of partner participation, and is materially improving the flow-through from operating profit to net income for our shareholders. We're also seeing a change in the components of net income in our listed Indian business, TFS. In addition, we expect to benefit from a somewhat lower than originally planned tax charge. These components come together to underpin the approximately GBP 0.14 earnings per share guidance. That brings me to the third key takeaway. We're making significant progress embedding stronger and sustainable cash generation across the business. Our free cash flow post-interest for the full year is expected to total approximately GBP 70 million. Following engagements with shareholders throughout the summer, we took a decision not to deploy any incremental new supply chain financing year- on- year, despite the fact that we continue to have more than GBP 70 million of undrawn facilities on that package. As a result, we now expect our free cash flow to come in modestly short of prior expectations. Nevertheless, and importantly, this delivery would represent a very significant, by which we mean approximately GBP 150 million improvement in underlying cash generation year- on- year. We expect capital investment in the year to total GBP 170 million. This will include a timing effect from certain projects being rescheduled in FY 2027 and the impact of a focused effort to collect capital contributions from our business partners through the year. Taken all together, this will leave leverage towards the lower end of our medium-term range. Reflecting this cash generation profile, our likely leverage position, and our capital allocation priorities for FY 2027, we are pleased to be announcing a new GBP 50 million buyback today. Turning now to our fourth and final message, the platform we are building for FY 2027. Through our Focus26 program, we have driven sustainable improvements in operating performance across the group. As well as driving stronger earnings and underlying cash flows, the program is resulting in a significant strengthening of group returns on capital, which we plan to take up and sustain above 20%. Perhaps most notably, we have made meaningful progress in continental Europe, where we expect to deliver a material year-on-year improvement in profitability with regional operating margin increasing to approximately 3% this year from 2.2% in FY 2025, and strengthening further as we look ahead. While there is still some heavy lifting to do, we are confident in our plans to build margins towards our medium-term target of greater than 5%, and to further increase returns and cash generation in the region. More broadly, though, the fundamentals of our business remain strong. We have attractive long-term structural growth drivers in global food travel with leading positions in air and leisure segments, a diversified geographic profile that can enable us to survive disruption in discrete markets, strong pipeline of contract opportunities, and excellent relationships with our clients and brand partners. While there remain areas of uncertainty, particularly with regard to the timing and pace of recovery and passenger travel across parts of APAC and the Eastern Mediterranean, the resilience we have demonstrated this year, the actions that we've taken across the business, and our momentum as we finish FY 2026 leave us well-positioned as we enter FY 2027. Finally, I'd like to thank all of our colleagues, partners, and clients around the world for their continued commitment, trust, and work throughout the year. With that, Geert and I would be happy to take your questions. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. To ask a question on the phone line, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a moment to assemble the queue. We will take our first question from the line of Tim Barrett from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Hi. Good morning, both of you. Couple of questions on North America, if that's okay. I'll restrict myself to that region. Obviously what you're showing in Q4 is actually not that much slower than Q3, even though, as you alluded to, the TSA data was pretty poor in August. Just trying to work out a couple of things. What's gone on in the fourth quarter and what you're hearing from airports and airlines. Then in terms of how that translates into a GBP 10 million reduction in EBIT guidance, it feels like quite a big drop through on just three months lower sales. Could you explain really what the dynamic around that part is as well? Thanks very much. Yeah, Tim, let me jump into both of those. Starting with America overall. Yeah, the data is the data in terms of what the passenger movements are through America, and it's essentially been kind of -2%, -3% year- on- year in terms of the TSA data through the summer. I would have to say at the time that we did our interims, and indeed again in early to mid-July, we did anticipate there would be a level of improvement on that. And while we've managed, as you heard me say in our remarks, to have a like-for-like sales level above the passenger data, I think it would be fair to say we had expected the passenger dynamic to be a bit more positive than ended up being the case. So, our U.S. business has traded fine through the period, but it is also fair to say it's been a little below what we might have expected it to have been four months, five months, or even two or three months ago. So that would be the dynamic. I think the key thing here is making sure we can continue to trade the business well, regardless of that passenger dynamic. I think turning to your point on operating profit. Just to be clear, we did not give specific EBIT guidance. What we've been crystal clear on is the commitment we have to deliver earnings per share. Obviously, the most important component of that is operating profit. But I think, again, if I bring your question back to America, yes, the operating profit in America is a little bit lower than we expected it to be, but the vast majority of the savings that we've generated in the minority interest line are also in America, and that comes from how we're working with partners and how we're working with clients, and how we're setting up the business to have a stronger flow through to net income and ultimately to earnings for shareholders. So I do think how you think about our business here. It's important to recognize the importance of operating profit, but also the work that we're doing on particularly in relation to minority interest to improve the flow-through. What we will be walking through in more detail in December is the exact constituent parts of that, including by region, when we have closed out the books, and also the kind of sustainability of that going forward. Geert, I do not know if you want to add anything. No, I think that is good. On the other side, while not in the same order of magnitude, let us not forget either that we have been under pressure in the Middle East as well as a result of the conflict there. Our teams, frankly speaking, have done a tremendous job at trying to mitigate. There is a lot of moving parts in this. If you solely focus on the EBIT, there is a lot of elements that warrant a further double-click, I would say, when we get back to our prelims. Okay. Yeah. So that - 10% in the Gulf, presumably you were quite happy with, or at least reassured by? Yeah. Tim, I want to be careful that we're sharing very early data here, right? We have a lot more to say in December. Just to directly address that point, I think in the Gulf itself, we feel that we've traded quite well relative to expectations, and you've heard me reference that in the Gulf markets that we trade in, we would be at 90% of prior year levels. I think where we have seen the, what I might call, the sort of contagion effect of what's happened in the Middle East has really been the spread into Asia, India, and Eastern Mediterranean markets— Yeah. —where we had this very, very strong like-for-like momentum in the first half, and where that's fallen off hugely as with the disruption in flight routes, higher aviation fuel, and so forth. So, there is a portfolio, and I think on the other side, I don't want to overdo this because you'd have seen what we said in the statement, but the parts of our business in Europe, most notably the U.K. have just traded very, very strongly through all of this, even with this disruption, right? So I think at the profit line, our portfolio has come together to make sure we landed where we needed to land, but with a lot of moving parts by geography, and some reweighting in particular between operating profit and minority interest. Great. Thanks very much. Your next question comes to the line of Paul Ruddy from Davy. Your line is open. Hi. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple on maybe outlook, very difficult, but the buyback, the quantum, how you landed on GBP 50 million. Maybe within that, just a further comment on free cash flow. Is there any signal there around leverage, or is this maybe more a little bit of conservativism, versus, say, last year's program? If you could start with that, if that's okay. Sure. Good morning. I'll take this one. On the buyback, you've heard us say many times that we have a number of tools in our toolbox to create value for shareholders, and buyback is only one of them. You know that we have a very stable dividend policy that turns out between 30% and 40% of net income on the dividend on an annual basis. You have also seen that at the beginning of the year, we had guided for a certain CapEx number that now came out a little bit lower this year. For next year, we are still planning on roughly ballpark 5% of sales as a CapEx number for us. So if you put all those elements together, CapEx to support profitable growth, a stable dividend policy, and then on top of that, a share buyback program, when I look at the quantum of all of that, we believe that this is a significant add-on to what we've done this year, and we're very comfortable with the cash flow generation profile that we see for next year. But it's a balance of different elements. This is by no means saying that, "Oh, hang on, we'll generate less cash flow next year." No, on the contrary, I think this is a sign of confidence that we believe that what we have put in place, in terms of cash flow generation, creating a cash culture within the organization that most notably will be felt over time in improving the cash coming from working capital. I think all in all, this is a balanced message of comfort and confidence in our cash generation for the future. That's how we're thinking about it. I just want to remind you of the fact that when I came on and when we had our analyst call or conference in December, you remember that I said that cash generation was an extremely important target for myself and for the organization, and I think what we're doing here is a continuation of that commitment. Thanks very much for that. Could I just ask one follow-up on the cash flow? The change in the supplier financing that you signaled a swing on the free cash flow, is that a one-off FY 2026 effect, or is there anything more to think about as we look into working capital dynamics, et cetera, as we think into 2027? You mean the GBP 70 million instead of the GBP 100 million? Exactly, yeah. The bridge, which I think you explained— Yeah. —the difference between the two. Right. Thank you for the clarification. Listen, the way I would think about this or talk about this is the following. We have made significant progress in the underlying cash generation in this business as a result of our focus on working capital, amongst others. Secondly, discipline on CapEx. Not only on the CapEx outflows, but also discipline on the collection of cash CapEx contributions from our partners. We have, over the summer, as Patrick alluded to, had an impact in the U.S., one of our highest margin businesses that obviously has had an impact on the cash generation as such, despite all the great efforts that that team has done to collect more cash from the JV partners. But I think the biggest element here that I would point to is a choice that I've made after the summer. Patrick mentioned it in his prepared remarks, is that we made a choice not to pull more on the supply chain finance facility based on feedback that we got from investors. We could have done that, but we decided not to. As a result, what you see is really, in a supply chain finance neutral environment, we're pulling exactly the same as last year. So the underlying improvement from last year to this year is really coming from lower CapEx, better EBITDA, and better underlying working capital momentum. I think that's the choice we made, and I'm very comfortable with that choice. Would it be worth maybe just I introduced in my remarks this year-on-year improvement of GBP 150 million. Do you maybe just want to explain how that actually flows through relative to the SCF? Yeah, exactly. That probably is not as intuitive when you look at the face of the cash flow statement. But essentially what that means is last year, when you look at the free cash flow that we generated, pre-dividend, that was around about GBP 80 million. But that GBP 80 million was supported by the start of this supply chain facility to the tune of GBP 154 million. So if you take that GBP 154 million out of the GBP 80 million, last year was actually without SCF, we would've been GBP - 70 million. So that GBP - 70 million versus a positive circa GBP 70 million this year marks that swing. That swing comes from a combination of higher EBITDA, lower CapEx, better CapEx contribution collections, and a residual element of lower minority cash outflow. Then working capital buckets still to be confirmed as we're still working through the close. The dust still needs to settle on the different components. But that in order of magnitude is the swing we are talking about. Yeah. The reason I said that is that to Paul's question of what's the underlying momentum of improvement year- on- year, it's actually very strong. We need to keep going with that. Absolutely. There's more work to be done. Will it be exactly the same or of the same magnitude for next year? Hard to say. We need to let the dust settle on the close. I am absolutely confident in the structural improvements that we've put in place. But they now have to work themselves through the system and, yeah, we're looking forward to do that. But there's more work to be done for us, for sure. That's really helpful. Thanks both of you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. That is star one if you wish to ask a question. Your next question comes to the line of Leo Carrington from Citi. Your line is open. Thank you. Good morning. On the topic of CapEx, can you just clarify this all, is this from contract starts that have effectively been moved into next year rather than this year, or is it some kind of scope change or change in what you will be delivering? Secondly, just could we just go back to the supply chain financing, please? That was helpful color. Can you just elaborate a bit more on what the other impacts on the business are? Is this to do with total cost of financing primarily and, I suppose, simplification of the financing structures? Sure. Let me take the last question first. On the supply chain finance, the operating cost of using supply chain financing is roughly 15% cheaper than funding through a traditional revolving credit facility. So, on an EPS level, SCF is helpful compared to an RCF. So that's just order of magnitude what I have in my head. On the CapEx— Yeah. —there's a lot of moving parts here as well. Our CapEx is per definition, relatively long lead time. You negotiate a contract today and your CapEx commitments that you make may have a component in year one, but they most likely have a component in year two and later on in the contract. So your CapEx in any given year will always be consisting of a layer of stuff that has been committed to in the past and new contracts that you're dealing with in year. Now, one of the other characteristics in our business is that the timing of that CapEx, you can play with that a little bit in an intelligent way. Obviously, you want to trade that off against the value creation that will come from that CapEx. That means that there is a timing element of CapEx that you have a certain level of control over, notwithstanding the fact that you have committed to certain projects in the past. That is one element. The second element is that the CapEx that we talk about is always a net CapEx number. Our JV partners in the U.S., they contribute to that CapEx number to the tune of the participation or the equity stake that they have in the JV vehicles. That means that there is a collection element to it here. This is where the CapEx number probably overlaps a little bit with the activities and the focus that we have on cash generation. That has definitely helped here, thanks to the tremendous efforts that our U.S. team has done in this area last year. The last element I would say, other than conscious choices in CapEx, there is always an element of execution timing in CapEx. Anybody who has done a remodeling in their own house knows that timing is never what you plan it to be. There is always this inherent element of shifting from one year to another. We are very comfortable with the CapEx number for this year. By no means do we believe that the lower number this year versus the guidance is in any way, shape, or form going to negatively impact the strategic outlook for the organization or the growth of the company. It is just a natural element of our business and how we work in rail stations and in airports. For the future, for the coming years, we are planning and banking on roughly 5% of sales. CapEx has to be as 5% of sales as a good balanced number that can support both growth and renewal in our portfolio. Yes, that is very clear. Thank you very much, guys. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone. Your next question comes to line of Luka Trnovsek of Berenberg. Your line is open. Morning, guys. Thank you for the question. Two from me. One, I wanted to ask on FY 2027. I think in last year's Q4 trading update, you gave some color on your comfort with current market expectations. Just wondering if you could give us anything about how you're feeling about FY 2027. Also on the U.K. side, obviously a market leading performance in Q4, but then as we head into Q1, the comps get tougher. So wondering how much growth you think you can deliver in this segment and whether you can continue to outperform. Thank you. Okay. Listen, yeah, thank you. We're going to hold on any specific guidance for FY 2027 until we do our preliminary results in early December. But I would make two points. As we're setting the business up for FY 2027, we're assuming a continuation of the current levels of what I call geopolitical uncertainty and events across the world. You only have to look at this week for examples of that. But we think we are set up to be able. We're conscious of what you guys and consensus thinks we're going to do. If we had a concern about that, we will be saying something. You've seen we've been able to trade our way pretty resiliently through the different dynamics of different parts of the world. You've heard here talk about the confidence we have in further strengthening of cash generation alongside the top line and profit growth that we would expect. So, I'd make those points at a high level. We are very proud of what our U.K. business is doing. We also do recognize that with each quarter, a very strong like-for-like performance, we create a high hurdle rate for 12 months later. But we have had a U.K. business that has had very good like-for-like for some time. We think we can continue to trade that business very well, and certainly that would be the plans that we have. We'll pull this together into more integrated overall group guidance at the end of the year. So that's how I would describe it. And we look forward, as I say, to being able to give you a bit more information on that in December. But please don't take the lack of specificity on forward-looking guidance as an indication that we're anticipating problems, because we're not. Thank you very much. That's very helpful. Your next question comes to line of Greg Johnson from Shore Capital. Your line is open. Yeah. Morning, gents. A couple of questions, please. Just going back to the sort of cash flow again. Can you confirm that the GBP 70 million free cash would include cash exceptional items and any kind of steer on where we think they should land? And with that, in terms of working capital, traditionally, we'd see sort of SSP as a sort of negative working capital business. Does that still hold true going forward in terms of assumptions there? And then sort of moving away from that, just on Europe, can you provide some sort of greater granularity on sort of the progress around restructuring rail in particular in continental Europe and sort of the timeframe to exit from those 100 or so units? Thank you. Let me take the two first ones first. Greg, you are right that GBP 70 million would be net of some cash exceptional outflows. Quantum to be defined, but that would be less than what we had last year. That's what I have now. But again, to be confirmed, we don't have everything in the right buckets yet. Second, on working capital assumption, you are right that our starting hypothesis, of course, is that in this type of business, working capital should be a source of funding going forward. That is what we're aspiring to. Now, we have a lot of visibility to improve in this business, not in the least because we are in a transition period where we're unlocking trapped cash. We've talked about that during the half year a couple of times. When the dust settles on that, I would anticipate to see indeed working capital to be a source of funding for this type of business. That's what we're working towards with all the structural improvements that we're doing. One of the reasons to keep SCF also, or one of the benefits of keeping SCF stable is that allows us to see what the true underlying components of the working capital improvement will be over the next couple of months. So we'll continue to be focused on that. What was the third component again? The third question? Greg, can you repeat that? Or— Well, I think it's Europe. I gave it— Yeah. Around sort of Europe. Okay. Yeah. Fine. Yeah, Europe. Sorry, forgot about it. Greg, Geert and I, actually with our Board, were with our European team all of last week in France, actually. We are hugely encouraged by the speed at which we are delivering the European rail restructuring plan that we spoke about in our interims. Bluntly, it's substantially fully done in terms of the units that we will be closing, the stations that we're restructuring, the rent renegotiations that have happened right across France and Germany, the beginnings of the operational improvement around the residual estate. You are going to see the improvement in our rail franchise in Europe really feed through strongly as we go into 2027 and 2028. We have an excellent team really driving that. Even in an environment of likely travel disruption of different kinds, all of us have seen what's been happening in France, for example, in the last week. I just think we've got a real grip on the portfolio we want in rail. The changes that we needed to make, we've made in a really structured, programmatic way, and we feel good about the path as we go forward there. I do also want to note, I know we've been speaking about it for a couple of years now, but you heard me say it is that we have now completed the full exit of all of the motorway service station units that we had in Germany. That was a very large-scale phased exit, and it's now fully complete. That won't be part of our business in any form in FY 2027. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. There are no further questions on the line. I'll now hand back to Patrick Coveney for closing remarks. Good. Well, guys, thank you for joining us. Thank you for the questions, and we look forward to setting this out in more detail, with fuller explanations around many of these areas when we do our full year results in early December. Speak soon. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye now.